To the North (25 page)

“I don’t,” said Julian, retreating.

“Well then, Julian, don’t fuss.”

“But she seems rather young.”

“So her clients all think, till they get her bills.”

“But this isn’t business.”

“I didn’t say so—really, Julian, you talk like an old maid!”

“I’m sorry: I thought you were worried,” said Julian tactlessly.

He caught from Cecilia the flash of a bright angry look; she threw her cigarette away, paused, then said weakly: “You make me exaggerate. You suggest I’m suggesting the most preposterous things. I wish I had never said anything. But then whom am I to talk to? One must keep this from Georgina at any price. … I suppose I
am
worried; you see, it was I who picked Markie up in the train. If Emmeline likes him enough to be consistently charming, he would be mad if he didn’t fall for her. He isn’t a fool: he must know what’s good when he sees it. But their marriage would be a catastrophe; I should do everything to prevent it. He’s a bully; he’d make her wretched!”

“I don’t think that need trouble you: he’s quite unlikely to marry—at least, for years.”

“How do
you
know? So few men seem ‘likely to marry’— how awful they’d be if they did. But when it’s a question of Emmeline—”

“He still wouldn’t marry,” Julian repeated. “It still wouldn’t suit his book.”

“Why not?”

“For hundreds of reasons.”

“Money?”

“I daresay; for one thing.”

“But what do you know about Markie? You hedge and hesitate, Julian; it is enough to send one out of one’s mind. You suggest he’s not to be trusted.”

“My dear, you suggested that long ago!”

“I only said I thought so: you go on as though you knew. How well do you know him?”

“Hardly at all.”

“Then what do you know
about
him?”

“Nothing particular.”

Cecilia, getting up irritably, began walking about the room. She pressed one cigarette with a splutter into a rose-bowl, hesitated beside the piano and lit another. She stared down the garden at the concave, glassy distance from which an enemy army seemed to be marching. “You make things impossible for me,” she said.”If
I
suspected some woman of doing someone you valued harm I should tell you all that I knew of her. But these wretched little discretions— If Emmeline were your sister,
would
you have Markie about the place?”

“Not as things are,” said Julian, plainly disliking the question.

“You mean, not if they were in love?”

“If you like.”

“You saw them at lunch,” said Cecilia. “But then—do forgive me, Julian—how can you tell?”

“You are overbearing, aren’t you?” said Julian, so gently she saw at once that she must have hurt him. But a second and ice-cold perception succeeded the first. “Perhaps,” she said, “
you’d
like Emmeline?”

“I don’t know,” said Julian, startled. “I hadn’t thought.”

She said cheerlessly: “So that you, of course, would imagine things.” The drawing-room in which she retreated from him to its furthest alcove, seemed large and over-cold for a tete-a-tete. His or her presence, she could not have said which, became superfluous and embarrassing in this solid and formal drawing-room which out of weeks of oblivion and shut-up silence had crystallised round its objects—brass bowls, the piano, a tall screen painted with lilies—a sardonic indifference to their company. Remembering he was supposed to have come to see Pauline, she made off towards the door.

“Where are you going?” said Julian.

“To find Pauline.”

“No, don’t go; I want lo talk to you.”

“We see each other so much.”

“Why won’t you marry me?” Walking after her down the long room, he rather sharply dissuaded her hand from the door-knob. As his fingers touched the cold porcelain she drew hers away quickly, remarking: “There seemed no reason.”

“You ask too much.”

“
You
expect too little.”

More amicably, however, she took his arm; they strolled back as though the window by which their talk had begun were entitled to its conclusion. “Of course,” she said, “if we were married you could interfere with Emmeline. But I don’t really think it would be much good.”

The irony of her tone, with the ambiguity of the remark, kept him silent: still rather angry, he had to explore and reject every possible shade of her meaning while they stood, her arm through his, a picture of intimacy, like people married some years, looking out at the garden. Two or three lime-flowers, heavy with rain, fell; she heard again yesterday’s cuckoo or its discordant brother. If this fresh understanding with Julian—or at least this return to a point where they had been more or less happy—could not lift the lowering sky or tune up the cuckoo, it at least set ticking again in Cecilia a clock that counted most hours of pleasure. Something unexpectedly sweet was dropped into her mouth opened wide for a vacuous afternoon yawn. She felt grateful to Julian, quite contrite, and had he come rather better out of this question of Emmeline might have quite easily loved him.

Susceptible to that illusion of afternoon peace, so absolute in a strange house, and to the flowery drip of the lime with its wet leaves hanging, he remarked: “I don’t really think this is like a morgue.”

“I’ve been here too much.”

“Perhaps one could live in the country if one were married. Or could one?”

“Oh no, one could never do with the country for long.— Then what
shall
I do about Markie?”

“I don’t see what you can do, unless Emmeline asks you.”

Emmeline was, they both knew, never likely to ask. The question was begged, and begged, they both felt, ignobly. Already, however, Emmeline was remote; her face of sublime ignorance, that stirring and striking picture of love died out in Cecilia’s nearness. Cecilia beside him, eyes downcast and aspect mildly dependent, quickened in him the strongly domestic impulse to batten down hatches and keep all worry away. Solicitude, tenderness are single-minded and narrow: from this the integrity of the home. In this moment before she was quite herself again—exacting and restless, gay with such a sharp edge of unfriendly melancholy—he would have sacrificed anything to this peace that was a mirage.

She thought: “If I had gone on going out through the door, would he really have stopped me?” Sense leapt at the shade of a shadowy tussle about a door-knob.

“This poor little dog,” said Pauline, “he has no friends.”

The white dog pattered after them round the garden; Pauline was taking her uncle to see the view. Lady Waters, forgetting the chess-lesson, had put down the bottle of bull’s-eyes beside Pauline and gone out after Marcelle soon after lunch. No one else looked in, so Pauline had spent the afternoon happily, eating bull’s-eyes and reading
The Woman Thou gavest Me
. Time fled, she had discovered a masterpiece; when her uncle came in she had looked up all of a daze.

It was not bad out of doors. Pauline, breathing in the mild air upon depths of peppermint, felt she was swallowing ice. Having nothing to say she kept clicking her fingers and talked to the dog. “His name is Roderick,” she went on, “but he really answers to anything: I expect he is lonely. It is a sad life for a dog, if you come to think.”

“A dog’s life,” said Julian, trying hard to collect himself. “Why is he called Roderick?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know what an ornithologist was till I looked it up in the dictionary. You see I never thought I should meet one, or a composer either. What a number of interesting people Lady Waters does know: she seems to know everyone.”

“I quite agree,” said Julian.

“But all her friends have very unhappy lives. Do you think that is usual?”

“I … what did you say, Pauline?”

“Are unhappy lives usual?”

“I really don’t know.” This chance to get down to essentials with Pauline came at an unhappy moment. He asked hastily: “How is your friend Dorothea?”

“Very well, thank you. She would have sent you her kindest regards, but I was not certain if I should be seeing you.”

“I wasn’t coming.”

“But Lady Waters said she was sure you would come. When you telephoned this morning she said: ‘What did I say?’”

“And how are
you
getting on?”

“Very well, thank you; this half-term I am to be president of our form debating society. Dorothea and I are paving our garden; we may get an honourable mention, though naturally we do not hope for the prize.”

“I don’t see why not; your garden seemed very nice.”

Julian heard Cecilia’s voice in the distance. “You enjoy being here, I expect?” he went on with immense concentration.

“Very much; it’s a great thing to meet such interesting people. A girl of my age might easily feel
de trop
, but they are all determined to make me feel quite at home. Mrs. Summers came in last night and offered to hook my dress, but it hooks at the side. Shall we sit down in the summer-house?”

They sat down in the summer-house; a curtain of honeysuckle hung over the door; Roderick followed them in and sat shivering. The church clock struck four; the sound rolled up from the valley through shredding, vapoury clouds. Pauline, petting Roderick, said nothing more; Julian wondered if it were raining in Paris, and if he should have another word with Cecilia before he left… . He heard Lady Waters’ unmis-takeable step on the path; the gravel creaked, the step passed; she looked, questing, this way, that way. Parting the honeysuckle, Lady Waters looked into the summer-house: against the watery garden, in trailing green light from the creepers, she looked very large and marine, like the motherly spouse of Neptune. Roderick shot out past her and hurried off.

“That’s right, Pauline,” she said. “Have you shown your uncle the view?”

“I couldn’t find it,” said Pauline, flustered.

“No, the distance is cloudy to-day.” They made room for her in the summer-house. “You are not,” she said to Julian, “seeing us at our best; you must come again. And how do you think Cecilia is looking?”

“Quite well,” said Julian, surprised.

“I am not happy about her: she is pale, she is doing too much. Too many late nights, she needs someone to keep her in order: she will not listen to me.”

“That’s too bad,” said Julian nodding at Lady Waters as though he could see it must be difficult, painful even, to be an aunt.

“She’s talking again of America; she is anxious to see her mother. But I do not feel we must let her go. I think it is largely restlessness with her; I so wish she would settle down.”

“Very difficult, these days. I suppose the bishops, journalists and so on are right: this is a restless age.”

“All ages are restless,” said Lady Waters. Pauline, picking some honeysuckle to pieces, assented with eagerness. Looking with dissatisfaction about the arbour, their hostess said it was damp, so they all filed out and down the path to the rose-beds, Pauline trailing behind. “But
this
age,” Lady Waters went on, “is far more than restless: it is decentralized. From week to week, there is no knowing where anyone is. Myself, I move very little, but I am fortunate, I have my friends about me and human interests are inexhaustible. The human spirit is more than literature. What, I often say to myself, does one want with books?”

“I often wonder,” said Julian.

“Though the flow of ideas nowadays seems inexhaustible and all these new theories do certainly cast an interesting light on behaviour. I’m sure you agree? One may do so much, with a little judgment, by bringing theory to bear on life. Knowing that I am always willing to listen, friends bring me their difficulties; I am often surprised to find how a little talk, with a touch of some knowledge and penetration, may set things right.”

“I am sure that is so,” said Julian.

“Now Cecilia reads a good deal, when she is not running about, but I never think books mean much to her; she is emotional and needs some central interest. Emmeline has her work, but there is nothing of the professional woman about Cecilia; she is essentially feminine—don’t you think?”

“There’s not much of my idea of the professional woman about Emmeline.”

“Still, she has a turn for affairs and very good judgment: it seems possible she may not marry. So you are one of her clients?”

“I hope to be.”

“You think of going abroad? But not, I expect, for long?”

“No, that’s impossible for me, unfortunately.”

“You are all,” said his hostess playfully, “very much too anxious to leave England. Is that our naughty Emmeline’s propaganda? Myself, I am a born islander, for better or worse —Pauline,” she added, “run in like a dear child, and see if tea is ready: Sir Robert does not like to be kept waiting.” Pauline turned back up the path at a self-conscious trot; Lady Waters wheeled Julian off round a rose-bed. “And how,” she said, “do you find Pauline?”

“Quite in her element; it is really charming of you to have her.”

“We find her a very dear person; there is something appealing about her; so much sensibility under that shy look. She is, of course, shy, but so very responsive; she seems anxious to talk. She is devoted to you: quite a clear case of hero-worship. I shall not forget how her face fell when I told her you would not be coming, or how she lit up when you telephoned. And Cecilia, I really believe, had been more than half expecting you … Pauline is expecting, I think, to make her home with you when she leaves school?”

“I had hardly looked so far ahead.”

“It might not be easy, I can quite see, as things are at present: a young girl would hardly fit in with your present
m
é
nage
; she would need a woman’s sympathy and a woman’s care… . However, so much may happen in four years.”

Julian felt bound to agree with her. He looked at a snail in the box border, at yesterday’s roses, now spoilt and earthy, at to-morrow’s buds coming out. She approved his manners, which were impeccable, his air of reviewing in courteous and mild abstraction all she had said.

“Pauline,” she continued warmly, “has a spontaneous affectionate nature that is most winning. My husband has taken to her immensely: he is teaching her to play chess. And a charming sympathy has sprung up between her and Cecilia; all the weekend they have been inseparable; one sees Pauline follow Cecilia round with her eyes. Cecilia loves children; they bring out the sweetest side of her nature. Cecilia has missed so much: I should like to think that more was in store for her. It is hard to think of her youth as over, in any sense. It would need only a touch of happiness to bring her all out again, like a flower in sunshine. Since you came to-day, the pleasure of seeing a friend has given her quite a glow— Must you really go back tonight?”