The House of Discontent (16 page)

“All the more reason why I can go home alone,” Patricia replied. “You really mustn’t trouble to take me back.” How ridiculous it was that she should go on protesting against the thing she wanted most. How disappointed she would be if he replied: “Very well, if you really don’t mind going alone ...”

But instead he said: “It’s rather a lovely night. It might be rather pleasant to walk. What do you think?”

“Yes, I should love to walk,” she said quickly. (It would take them nearly a quarter of an hour on foot and only about two minutes in the car, so of course she would rather walk!)

“Will you be cold?” he asked.

“Not a bit.” It was cold, but she was hardly conscious of it, and when suddenly, but quite naturally, he took her arm, she felt as if she was on fire. Oh, if only that walk could last forever! She felt that there was so much to be said in such a short time, and yet for a moment she was utterly tongue-tied, and he did not seem to have anything to say to her either. The precious minutes were rushing by, and they were walking along in complete silence.

At last Patricia said: “It’s a lovely night,” and he replied: “Yes, it is, isn’t it?”

“The stars are so clear. Whenever I see a night of stars like this it always makes me conscious of our own littleness here on earth, and consequently rather afraid.”

“Consciousness of our littleness and insignificance doesn’t make me afraid,” he answered. “I think it’s rather comforting. If we are as insignificant as all that, no one is going to bother about us. It’s like putting one’s head under the bedclothes as a child and feeling quite safe.”

“But don’t you want to be bothered about?” she asked.

“No, I like to feel that I’m entirely my own master, and answerable to no one but myself for my actions and behaviour. The only thing in life I am afraid of is losing my invulnerability.”

“How do you mean exactly?” she asked.

“Putting myself at the mercy of another human being,” he replied quickly.

“And when does one do that?” she asked.

“When one allows oneself to fall in love.”

“Then would you never allow yourself to fall in love?” she asked in a low voice.

“Never without a hard struggle,” he replied.

“But won’t you miss a great deal?”

“I may miss something, but I shall avoid a great deal also—a great deal of torture. I think peace of mind is the most valuable thing on earth, and if you fall in love you lose it. As I said before, you put yourself at the mercy of another human being, and human beings are sometimes very cruel.”

“But what if you found a human being who was not cruel, and whose only wish was to make you happy and give you real peace of mind and real contentment, always?”

“Does such a person exist?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied softly.

“If such a person did exist it would all be different, of course,” he said.

Patricia was on the very brink of giving herself away now, and drew back, terrified. For a moment she could not trust herself to speak. She wanted to cry out to him:

“I am that person; don’t you know it, don’t you feel it?” but the possible consequences of such an indiscretion appalled her. He might reply: “Really, Miss Norton, I’m most awfully sorry, but that isn’t what I meant at all. I like you well enough, of course, but ...” At the same time she had an intuition that he wanted her to say something just like that.

Anthony also was silent, and this vital moment hung in suspense between them.

Afterwards she remembered the words which Mary had reported that he had said of her: “She hasn’t got the courage of her intuitions.” Was this an occasion when she had shown that lack of courage? After all, if she had said it then, if she had cried out to him, as her intuition dictated, “I am that person,” and he had laughed at her, would she have been so very much worse off? It would have been a gamble, it is true, but did one ever get anywhere in life without taking a gamble?

It was the old adage holding her back, the old theory that a girl must not, in any circumstances, throw herself at a man’s head, but must wait patiently for him to take the initiative. That idea was so deeply ingrained in her—as it is in the minds of millions and millions of women all the world over—that she couldn’t, even if she had wanted to, go against it. It was stronger than she herself—an inhibition stronger than all her instincts or
all
her intuitions. And, after all, who was she to dispute the wisdom of this age-old convention?

And so the moment passed. She let it slip, and could do nothing to hold it, and when they spoke again it was of impersonal things.

They were approaching the house, and there was no more time in which to establish any real contact.

“You have to go back tomorrow?” she asked.

“Yes. I’m afraid so. By the way, have you arranged anything yet about Mary’s dance?”

“Your mother was speaking about it only this afternoon,” she replied. “She said there was still plenty of time.”

“That means she hasn’t done anything yet, I suppose. How naughty of her! I must talk to her about it. I wouldn’t disappoint Mary for the world.”

“I know how much she’s looking forward to it,” Patricia said.

“Well, you’ll have to help mother and see she does it, will you?”

By this time they had reached the front door, and he let go of her arm. How she missed that contact with him! It was as if the warmth and light had suddenly been withdrawn from her world. She held out her hand.

“Good-night,” she said, “and thank you so much for seeing me home.”

“Good-night,” he replied, shaking hands. He stood for a moment looking up at the house, and then he said: “I like to think of you working here.” She thrilled to his words. “You’d better write and tell me how the arrangements for the dance are going,” he added.

“But I don’t know your address,” she said hastily.

“Mother will give it to you,” he replied.

“And you would really like me to write?”

“I wouldn’t have asked you if I hadn’t ... Good-night.”

“Good-night,” she said, and turned quickly into the house.

Patricia could not go to sleep that night. She kept going over and over again in her mind the conversation they had had on the way home, and then she would say to herself again those words of Anthony’s: “I like to think of you working here.” Why should he have said that unless he had some special fondness for her? Did it not mean that he liked the idea of her being in his house?

Every time she thought of those words the thrill returned. And she was actually going to be able to write him! That was another wonderful thing that had come out of the evening.

Why was it, she asked herself, that she worshipped him—she who had never in her life before been subject to hero-worship!

“It is,” she thought, “because whatever he does is right. His tastes, his opinions, his actions, always seem just right. He is incapable of doing anything mean or dishonest or underhand. If you ever have any doubts in your own mind about a course of action ask yourself, ‘Would he approve of it?’ and if your instinct tells you he would, it will be all right, but if your instinct tells you he wouldn’t, don’t do it.” She asked herself, “Why do I know this so surely about him?” and the answer came promptly: “Because I do. It’s a question of faith. Where there is faith no proof is needed; where there is no faith, proof is of no avail.” She looked at the luminous clock by her bed and saw that it was nearly three o’clock.

“I must go to sleep,” she thought. “I must, I must, otherwise I shall be a wreck in the morning, and that won’t be fair to my work.”

She tried counting sheep; she tried saying the alphabet backwards; she tried drawing a map of Europe in her head. Gradually she grew sleepy and then she was suddenly startled into wakefulness by the most surprising thought: “I’m in love with him—madly, head over heels in love with him.”

There was a certain relief in owning it to herself at last. She put her arms round her pillow and was asleep almost immediately.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

PATRICIA took a lot of trouble over the first letter she wrote to Anthony. She wrote it over and over in her head before actually committing it to paper, and when it was set down in ink she made three fair copies before she was at all satisfied.

Her chief difficulty in writing to him was to know what to call him. He had called her Patricia, yet she did not feel she knew him well enough to write to him as Anthony. On the other hand, there was something very pompous about writing to him as Sir Anthony.

In the end she made up her mind to call him nothing at all, but as this would look strange in a letter she decided to write a postcard and enclose the postcard in an envelope. She had some really lovely postcards of different parts of China, but wasted two of them in making fair copies. The one she sent eventually was a very beautiful view of the old Summer Palace at Peking.

This is just to let you know that the arrangements for the dance are going ahead (she wrote). Your mother is sending out invitations for the 24th May. We are all very excited about it. No time for more as I am wanted in the ward.

Yours,

Patricia N.

He was not to know that these few, bald lines were the quintessence of days and nights of slow distillation, or that far from going into the ward after she had finished this last copy, she sat with it in her hand for over half an hour wondering what he would think of her writing. If this had not been her favourite postcard it is quite probable that she would have made yet another copy, for she was not at all satisfied with the figures she had made for the 24th. They were too big for the rest of the writing, and the 2 had an exaggerated loop to its tail.

For the next few days she lived for Anthony’s reply, and when it didn’t come she experienced a sickness of disappointment at every post.

There is no peace in love until the beloved person becomes a constant companion, or until you know him so well that you know that his silence is due to some mischance and not to any lack of thought for you. She had been happy when he left her because he had asked her to write to him, but now she was worse off than before, for to write and to receive no reply was only conducive to an inner suspense and agitation which would not have been there if she had had no hope of hearing from him at all.

Happiness and success come most often when we are not looking for them—and success certainly seems to come to us when we need it the least. So often it breaks over us when we are already on the crest of the wave.

It is typical of the irony of life that Patricia should have received her letter from Anthony by the one post when she was not looking or hoping for it. It came by the afternoon post; but that morning a tragedy had occurred which had swept all other thoughts out of her head.

A little girl had died. It was the first death that had occurred at the hospital since Patricia had been there. The child had come in the evening before to have a serious operation. She was only six—a particularly bright, attractive little girl, with fair, curly hair and a perfect wild-rose-tinted skin. Her mother had brought her in and had been allowed to stay and undress her and see her to bed. The mother had been more upset than the child when the time came to leave her. The little girl was excited by her new surroundings, and being an only child was thrilled to find herself in a ward full of other children.

Patricia was doing the teas and stopped to have a special word with the little newcomer as she handed her a tray. “What is your name?” she asked.

“Priscilla.”

“What a pretty name. I’m sure you are going to be very happy with us, Priscilla. We have such fun in this ward. And then there are lots of lovely books and toys for you to choose from.”

The little girl had been too shy to talk, but she had looked at Patricia with beaming eyes, and before she went to sleep that night she had felt sufficiently at home to chatter away to her next-door neighbours—a child with a broken arm and another who had been badly scalded by a kettle, both of whom were well on the way to recovery.

While the child was in the operating theatre the next afternoon, Patricia was helping a probationer to get her bed ready for her return, but she never came back to it.

Patricia caught a glimpse of the mother and father afterwards, after they had been told. The mother was weeping with her head bowed, but her husband had his arm round her and it was a strong arm.

Patricia hated to go back to the ward and to the empty bed. She saw the probationer strip it and take the mattress away to be aired. Next day it was occupied by a child who had been run down by a lorry. The child recovered. Ever afterwards Patricia took a special interest in the occupant of this particular bed.

Patricia did not know Anthony’s writing, but she knew from its very unfamiliarity as well as from the Gloucestershire postmark that it must be from him. And yet at the moment she was so full of an emotion transcending anything personal that she could not even bring herself to open it. These moments when we are filled with a compassion so deep and so wide-spreading that our own little individualities and selfishnesses are lost in it, are all too rare and too short-lived.

In the evening, when she at last brought herself to open the letter, her hands trembled and her heart was beating almost to the point of suffocation. She had thought that afternoon that never again would her own small personal life seem of any importance—that never again would she be subject to fits of restlessness and agitated longings, and yet here she was, only a few hours afterwards, opening Anthony’s letter with a thumping heart, knowing full well that she was as much in his power (or rather in the power of her love for him) as ever.

Perhaps it is because the majority of human beings cannot remain for any length of time in sublimated mood, because they must return sooner or later (usually sooner) to trivialities and small personal issues, that they are able to retain their sanity and sense of proportion in a chaotic world. This perpetual concern with trivialities gives them their incredible power of endurance.

Patricia looked at the end of the letter first. He had signed himself,
“
Yours ever, Anthony Brierleigh.
”
His writing was small and very adult. His letter covered the front of one page and half the back. He had written: