Encounters: stories (10 page)

IT was six o'clock, the dusky sky was streaked with gold behind the beech-trees and the bells were already beginning; they had sat like this since tea. Mrs. Roche had turned half-round to watch the sunset, her hands were clasped along the back of her chair and her chin rested on her interwoven fingers. She blinked a little in the level light, and all the little lines were visible about her eyes and round her puckered mouth. Laura May and Mrs. McKenna sat on the low window seat, faintly aureoled, their empty cups beside them on the floor. Archie Manning was somewhere on the sofa, away among the shadows of the room, leaning back with his legs so twisted that his big feet stuck grotesquely out into the light. They had almost forgotten his existence, and his masculinity did not obtrude itself upon the conversation.

Cups and silver held the last of the sunlight, the tall room gradually obscured itself; here and there a frame or mirror gleamed on the shadowed walls. 176

They were talking about the First Woman; something had been said of her in the sermon that morning, and the thought had germinated in their minds all day.

Little Mrs. McKenna had had, so far, most to say; now she paused to light another cigarette, and Mrs. Roche turned her eyes in Laura's direction—she did not move her head.

"Laura has been nothing but a dusky profile. What is she thinking about that makes her so silent?"

"Laura is one of these primitive women,"said Mrs. McKenna, inhaling smoke;"she doesn't think, she communes."

Laura was a big fair girl; her silences made other people talkative, her virginal starts and blushes stimulated Mrs. McKenna. She sat twisting and untwisting a gold chain round her neck, and said :

"Oh, I don't know really. I am very unoriginal, you know."

** But nobody is original,"said Mrs. Roche, in her deep voice."It's no good, really; all the oldest ideas are the best. But I was thinking, children,looking at the sunset,

of her despair, on that first night, watching the hght go out of the world. Think how it must have feh."

"I expect Adam was reassuring,"said Mrs. McKenna;"he'd seen it happen before."

"No, he hadn't; they were born on the same day—that is, weren't they? Bother, look it up in Genesis."

"Yes, they were,"said Laura conclusively. She was full of information.

"So Adam had no time to be lonely— that was a pity. It would have made him so much more grateful"

"—Psychologically,"interrupted Mrs. Roche,"how interesting it all is, supposing it were true. Eve, of course, was at first no practical assistance to him. There were no chores, no mending. They didn't wear fig-leaves till after the Fall."

"That must have been nice,"said Mrs. McKenna—"I mean the no fig-leaves. But inexpressive

''—Yes, inexpressive. I was going to say, rather impersonal."

"Oh, come, Gilda, if one's own skin isn't personal, what is!"

"I don't know,"said Mrs. Roche slowly-"I don't think it's very personal. After all, it's only the husk of one—unavoidably there. But one's clothes are part of what one has got to say. Eve was much more herself when she began putting flowers in her hair than when she sat about in just—no fig-leaves. And she was much more herself than ever when she had got the fig-leaves on, and you and I are much more ourselves than she was."

"Then do you think covering oneself up is being real?"asked Laura. She entered the conversation with heavy, serious grace, as she would have entered a room.

"I don't know,"said Gilda Roche."The less of me that's visible, the more I'm there."

Laura, looking at Gilda's face so nearly on a level with her own, believed that it was one of the dearest on earth, with those satirical eyes. It was in this belief that she came to stay for long week-ends, and was hurt by Mrs. Roche's other incomprehensible friends."That's your mind?"she said."You mean you feel a deeper sense of identity behind reserve?"

Mrs. Roche looked at her for a moment, then out over her head at the sunset. Mrs. McKenna fidgeted; she disHked this interchange of the personal note."I don't agree with you,"she said, raising her voice to drown the insistence of the bells."I'm for off with everything—clothes, pose, reserve."

"Oh, now, Fanny, keep a little pose."

"Perhaps,"she conceded unblushingly,"a little. Just a flower in the hair. Then to walk about among things like Eve among the trees, and feel them brushing up against me."

"But the world is so crowded, Fanny,"said Gilda, who seemed to be enjoying Mrs. McKenna."Just think, wherever you went it would be like walking in the park."

"I am rather mixed,"said Laura;"are we speaking metaphorically, or not?"

"Not"said Mrs. McKenna, poking her."Oh, decidedly not."She had been longing to poke Laura for some time, every line of the girl's anatomy annoyed her.

The bells came pealing chime after chime, their echoes pervaded the darkening room. Archie stirred on the sofa. 180

"Don't they make one feel holy,"he said.

Laura, who had blushed for Archie during the parts of Mrs. McKenna's conversation— one never knew what that little woman was going to say, her mind flickered about like a lizard—thought that it might now be possible to turn the current."I like them,"she asserted.

"I hate them! I hate them!"cried Mrs. McKenna, putting her hands up over her ears and stamping her foot.

"They've been ringing for the last half-hour and you didn't seem to mind,"said Gilda Roche, bending down to knock the ash oil her cigarette into Laura's tea-cup.

"Yes, but they come in at the pauses so reprovingly; like Wilson putting his owl's face round the door. He longs to clear away the tea-things, but you give him no encouragement, and he is afraid of tumbling over Archie's feet. He's been in three times."

"I know,"said Gilda penitently."But if he takes away the tea-things it will leave us all sitting roimd in an empty circle, with no particular raison d'etre^ i8i

"Archie is feeling holy,"said Mrs. McKenna, looking across at the sofa not without respect."I wonder what it feels like. At present his mind is in the past. When this present is the past it will Hnger longest in this particular part of the past (how difficult that was to say). Seven or eight Sundays hence, Archie, when you are in Africa, very lonely and primaeval, leaning on your gun, you will think back to one Sunday evening in the country, in Gilda's drawing-room, and you'll try and hum the chimes (unconsciously you're learning them now). You'll shut your eyes and see the big windows and the beeches, and Laura and me, and think what sweet women we were."

"Oh, shall I?"said Archie in a discouraging tone.

Fanny McKenna was coming a little too near the mark; she was a discordant person altogether, and would have been better away. He was very happy with his head in the dark, listening to Gilda and watching Laura listen—he had been curiously attracted lately by the movements of her big head and big, rather incapable-looking white hands. 182

"I should like a life in the wilds,"said Mrs. McKenna thoughtfully."It's a pity I can't go with you."

"Yes,"said Archie politely.

"But it wouldn't suit me; I should be terrible—luxuriate, over-develop.''

"I thought that was what you wanted, Fanny,"said Gilda unwisely."' Off with everything,' 3^ou know."

"Not when there was nobody about. What would it matter if everything was off or on? Nobody would be the better for it. What's the good of being sincere when there's nobody to be sincere at?"

"There'd be Archie."

"Well, an3rway, there's William,"said Mrs. McKenna conclusively."And I can't go. I'm afraid I don't love Archie enough. But he will be very lonely—won't you, Archie?"

"Oh, I don't know,"said Archie evasively, rolling his head about among the cushions."I suppose so. I suppose one will live a good bit in the past and future if one has got too much time to think and not enough to do in the present."

"What future, Archie?"said Mrs. Roche with curiosity.

"Oh, I don't know. Coming back, I suppose. I ought to be back in four years. I wonder where everybody will be."

"I shall be here, a little greyer-haired, perhaps, and stupid; several of my friends will have given up coming down to see me, including Fanny—who will be wherever William isn't. Laura will probably be married"

"Oh?"said Laura consciously.

"—and you will come down once or twice, and be very retrospective and sweet, Archie, then drift away too. Perhaps you will bring the girl you are engaged to down to see me, and she will kiss you on the way home and say I am a dear old thing, and not be the least bit jealous any more. ... I know I shall be very stupid some day; I can feel it coming down on me, like mist from the top of a mountain."

"Laura will often come and see you,"consoled Mrs. McKenna,"and bring all the babies"

"We must all write to Archie,"interposed

Gilda."He will never answer, but he will expect the most enormous posts. It's queer that we three who have been talking so much about primaeval simplicity should have nothing much in front of us but drawing-rooms and gardens for the next four years, while Archie, who never asks for anything better than a sofa—from all I've seen of him—should be actually going out into the wilds to do things."

"Why, yes,"said Mrs. McKenna,"Archie is actually going to revert. Laura would do that easily too. Now for you and me, Gilda, life is much more perilous. Archie and Laura would camp out quite happily, compassed about by a perfect cloud of lions, and so long as they weren't eaten—well, they'd just go on living. But for us the next four years are going to be most terribly dangerous. I have been feeling so happy lately that I know I must be terribly insecure, right at the edge of something. The struggle for life—they'll never know the meaning of it, will they, Gilda? The feeling that if you stopped for a moment you'd go out."

Gilda's eyes narrowed."Yes, it's desperate,

Fanny, isn't it? You contesting every inch and I longing to grow old beautifully"

"And murdering,"said Fanny intensely,"smothering your youth!"

Gilda began to laugh."I don't think you're right in saying that Archie and Laura live—just negatively. They are a great deal more than not dead. And you're very sweeping, Fanny; nobody likes to be dismissed as incomplex. Archie is a man of action, strenuous in his mind, and Laura is reposeful— which needs energy. That is why we love her."

"Yes, don't we,"said Fanny generously,"but we can't think how it's done."

"Oh, all big things are reposeful,"said Gilda;"look at the beech-trees."

"I am a very wiry Scotch fir,"said Fanny with relish."I stand against the skyline and cry out for gales. When they come I ecstasise. Gilda, you are a larch tree planted in a windy place. You look down and think you long for a valley but every inch of you undulates. In a calm you'd go quite limp. You in a calm!"

"It's all I want,"said Gilda. She raised her

chin from her hands and leant back to look round the shadows of the room, her hands still resting on the back of the chair. She had an eternal youthfulness in gesture and repose. Archie, watching her silhouette against the fading sky, thought she was like a girl of nineteen.

"Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry!"intoned Fanny suddenly, echoing the church bell, which was now ringing for late comers with a little note of urgency."Don't you think we might take Archie to church? It would give him some more to remember. We might arrive before the second lesson, if we started now, and he could sit between Laura and you in rather a dark pew, and share a book, and sing ' Lead, Kindly Light'"

"Oh, don't, Fanny!"

Fanny had wondered how much of this they were going to stand. She loved to see Gilda defending her lambs."Oh, it's only that tiresome little Mrs. McKenna,"she assured them."Terribly flippant, isn't she?"She sighed."I wonder if anyone will ever think of me on Sunday evenings?"

"Only if they want a fourth at bridge,"

said Archie brutally. It was extraordinary how nice boys could hurt.

"I've never been to evening church. I know nothing about it; is it poignant?"asked Gilda."Laura, we will go next time you're here."

"You might go about eight weeks hence,"suggested Archie disinterestedly."When I shall be— there, you know. It would be rather amusing. And I say, suppose you always write on Sunday evenings—no, of course you couldn't; the house is always full of people. It's awfully funny to think of those bells going, and all these chairs and sofas here, and people in them, and not me. It's funny to think of everywhere going on without one, and still going on if one never came back."

"I'll keep your corner of the sofa for you, Archie. No one else shall sit in it."

"Yes, you might."The room was getting so dark that it did not matter what one said. Laura leaned back with her head against the window frame and sighed. Fanny, with her arms folded, peered down at her own little feet. Archie began to whistle under his

breath."' Turn down an empty glass,'"he said.

"Four years will fly,"said Laura.

"All depends,"said Fanny."Four years hence"She shivered.

"Funny if we all met here again,"said Archie.

"We won't,"said Fanny with conviction.

"Who knows, who knows?"said Gilda.

"Who wants to know? We'd never dare go on."

"Oh, Fanny, dare? . . . We've got to."

"We want to,"said Laura quietly.

"Yes, by Jove,"said Archie."It's all been jolly good so far; one feels They wouldn't let one down."

"They?"cried Fanny impatiently."They who? How dependent, how pitiful, how childish!"

"Well, you don't believe we're in the dark for ever now the sun's gone down,"said Gilda uncertainly.

"We guess it may come up again. We chance it. We're such optimists, such cowards!"

"Well, what do you beheve?"

Believe? I wouldn't sell myself."

"I think that's pitiful,"said Laura.

The door opened.

"Yes, Wilson,"said Gilda,"I think you might come in and take away the tea."They heard Wilson fumbling for a moment, then the room sprang into light. They blinked a little, suddenly aware of the furniture, each other's bodies, and a sense of betrayal. Mrs. McKenna rose briskly.