Randalls Round (19 page)

It was exactly like working with a well-informed gramophone – a hushed, husky voice with nothing alive behind it. But she’d quite obviously worked a lot. She was most useful. While we were working it wasn’t so bad. But when I tried to get cheery and conversational afterwards – suggested making tea and so on – she was as palely noncommittal as ever. “Yes” – “No” – “Thank you” – “No, thank you” – “Yes” – “Yes, please” – “Oh, yes” – “Yes…” That was about the extent of it. But the very difficulty of it determined me. I fixed up a second
tête-à-tête,
and went away feeling quite astonishingly curious. She puzzled me completely. Pallid and dull and dusty and silent as she was, she somehow suggested a mystery. I found myself thinking of her constantly. She absorbed my thoughts as did no one else in the place, however brilliant or beautiful or witty. I could not get her out of my mind.

There wasn’t much left of that term – only a few days – but I managed to see quite a lot of Adela Young. But “see” is the right verb. I saw her – occasionally heard her colourless voice whispering Greek verbs or Latin constructions – and that was all. I began to feel rather alarmed for my fiver. I didn’t see how anyone could
ever
extract any confidences from that cobweb of a girl. I didn’t believe she had any to make. As to an invitation from her people – hopeless. You simply couldn’t imagine her as having any people or home or anything. I wondered vaguely, when I first thought of this, if she could be a foundling, a child from some orphanage or something, and, if so, whether that wouldn’t cancel the bet. I rather jumped at the idea – I thought it would solve my difficulties so very nicely. So, rather tentatively, I broached the subject of families and homes and vacation plans to Adela.

“Shall you spend all the vac. at home?” I asked her one night when we’d “gone over” the work for the next day’s paper – Tacitus, I think it was.

“Oh, yes.”

“Shall you stay up for the viva, or go home in between?”

“Go home, I think.” She paused, and then actually volunteered a remark. “I come so late on the list,” she added.

“Yes. So do I, of course. Nuisance, beginning with a Y. But it’s too expensive to go all the way to Ireland and back again. I shall have to stay up. Sickening,” I added, “I shall be the only person in coll. except the dons.”

That was as broad as I dared make it, but I began to fear that she wouldn’t take the hint, she was so long before she spoke. She gave me the impression that she was trying to make up her mind to do something rather dreadful. At last she brought it out.

“I – that is, my guardian – she said – I mean, I – we – should be so glad – she said, if I had any friend – who would care…”

Her voice died away. It had been even more gasping and husky than usual – as if she were forcing herself to speak and her strength or courage wouldn’t last out.

It wasn’t exactly what you might call an invitation, but I eagerly took it as such.

“D’you mean that I could stay with you till the viva?” I asked with indecent haste.

“Oh, yes. She – she’d like you to… ” Again her voice faded into silence.

“But does she know anything about me?” I asked.

“She wants me – make friends – my own age…” whispered Adela. She said nothing whatever, I noticed, about her own inclinations.

I twisted round – (we were in my room, and I was sitting on the floor, while Adela Young sat in an upright chair behind me) – I twisted round and looked at her curiously. Her face was dead white and her forehead was damp. Her pale eyes stared at me, terrified, above a handkerchief that she held with a shaking hand to her mouth.

What on
earth
could the girl be so scared about? At the very worst, I might be horribly rude – though she must have known me well enough to know that I shouldn’t be. But I couldn’t even then see how the grossest insolence could be as terrifing as that.

“Did she – your guardian – suggest that you should ask me?” I asked, curious.

She nodded dumbly.

“It’s
awfully
kind of her,” I said warmly. “I’d love to.”

I expected to see her face clear at that; but it didn’t. She looked as scared as ever, mutely terrified, with a kind of half-wistful, almost pitying look as well. I stared at her, rather obviously, I’m afraid, trying to think what the idea was that she suggested to my mind. She looked embarrassed – got up restlessly – moved to the door. But she was too late. I’d got it. She looked exactly like someone who has just been through some awful experience of pain telling the next victim that it’s his turn… Relieved for herself but knowing what she was sending me to… I was tremendously interested, too much so to speak.

At the door she turned.

“Shall I say you’ll come?” she whispered.

“Oh, rather, please. May I send a note too? I mean – it’s so awfully kind of your guardian to invite me. I’d like to thank her.”

“Oh, I’ll tell her,” breathed Adela anxiously. “You needn’t bother. I’ll tell her. She’ll be very pleased,” she added; and at the words she did look a little easier.

When she was gone, I began to put things together. It came, I thought, to this – the kid must have been brought up in the firmest manner by a Tartar of a guardian of whom she was, even now, mortally scared. She had probably never been allowed to have a friend, or even a possession, of her own. Then, when she was grown up, the dragon had seen her mistake, and had sent her to Oxford with the idea of developing her. She was probably pathetically anxious to see Adela launching out, making friends, being a success, when, owing to the training she had given her, the poor kid was completely incapable of doing anything of the kind. And Adela was still so terrified of this tyrant of her childhood that she had dreaded my refusing – dreaded having to confess that she had, so far, failed to take advantage of her opportunities. That accounted, too, for her odd look at me. Dreading her guardian as she clearly did, she disliked having to hand me over to her. The Subconscious, no doubt, I thought rather grandly. Subconsciously she associated her guardian with whippings, supperless bedtimes and scoldings, and still feared, both for herself and for me, the iron discipline of her childhood. I felt very much pleased with this reconstruction, it fitted all the facts (so far as I knew them) so admirably. I was sure I was right!

I felt quite unwarrantably excited as I arranged my journey to the Bedfordshire village where, it seemed, Adela and her guardian lived. I’d already told Maude Evans where I was going, and rejoiced to see her scepticism change to disappointment and a kind of sulky admiration. If I could get the invitation, I was sure, I thought, to get the confidences in the end; and clearly Maude thought so too.She was obviously very much annoyed – though she could quite well spare the fiver. This added to my pleasurable excitement, which had been considerable in any case, for I was really interested, and very keen to find out what Adela’s background really was. I was sure my guess was right in the main, and I also felt that I might, with luck, be able to do something to set things right for the poor kid. I hate to see people as crushed as that, and I had, then, almost unlimited faith in my powers to please and cajole people, especially oldish ladies. I had, then, not the smallest doubt that I should be able to soothe and tame this particular dragon and make life much easier for her aggravatingly timid charge.

On the way down, and especially during the inevitable and interminable wait at Bletchley, I tried to extract something more from Adela about her home conditions. I particularly wanted to know whether there were any other members of the household; my campaign would rather depend on that. But Adela seemed terrified afresh by the very tactful questions I asked. “No – no one else – now… We… there were more of us – at one time…” And here her voice quite gave out, and her pale eyes filled with horror, gazing past me in blank misery.

Again I guessed – some appalling family tragedy, of which she was the sole survivor. Experience, memory, or a “complex” due to an ancient terror – that accounted for a lot. And, on top of it, this probably severe guardian… I was getting on. Soon, I felt, I should know enough to extract confidences! I was almost sorry when the train struggled in.

It was pretty full – there had been some local market somewhere – and it was quite impossible to talk. But I watched, surreptitiously, and I saw the pale, vague face opposite me grow paler and the eyes more strained and blank with every stage of our slow, jolting progress.

We were met at our station by an odd old cumbrous carriage, “handsome” to look at, but most depressing. One felt that it was quite inevitably connected with highly respectable funerals; you could almost smell black kid gloves and expensive wreaths. And our dead silence, broken only by Adela’s hoarse, uneven breathing and the splash as we rumbled through puddles, only made it worse. I’ve seldom felt so uneasy – not alarmed, nothing so definite, but just indefinably uncomfortable, with a rather quickened heartbeat as we moved, ponderously and silently, along deserted lanes, wet with the cold rains of March, and between hedges dripping with evening mist.

The house was as large, solid, respectable, and nearly as depressing as the carriage. As we got out, Adela startled me by a sudden, feverish clutch at my hand; hers was dead cold. But before I could respond, the huge front door had swung silently open, and we were inside the house.

It was quite different inside – warm, almost to oppression, well- lighted, roomy. I hardly had time to notice more than this before I saw my hostess.

One generally, though often unconsciously, makes pictures in one’s mind of what a stranger will look like. I hadn’t known that I had made such a guess about Adela Young’s guardian (whose very name I had not yet heard); I think perhaps I had a sort of Lady Dedlock, or even a Mrs. Reid, in my mind; but, as we entered the hall, comfortingly warm and bright after the misty fields and lanes, and I had my first glimpse of her, I knew at a glance that whatever I guessed had been wrong, for I could never, never have pictured such a person as I saw.

She remained sitting by the fire – a tiny, tiny little old lady, wrapped in a marvellous Eastern shawl; and the first thing that I thought was that she was tremendously, incredibly old – not “old” as one generally uses the word of people, but “old” as the pyramids and Stonehenge are old – timeless, ageless, and vital. And she was also – not beautiful – fascinating is the only word I can think of to express her face – a face “from which I could hardly take my eyes, it was at once so vivid and so inscrutable. When my first impressions settled into something more nearly approaching coherence, I thought I saw why that was. Her porcelain face was flushed, her tiny mouth scarlet, constantly moving, her motions all quick, precise, alert; but over her eyes she wore dark, blank glasses that gave her a secret look, rather dreadful.

As we came in, she moved round in her chair with one of the darting movements, between the movement of a bird and a snake, that, though they were startling at first, I soon got used to, they were so characteristic.

“Is that you, Adela? Have you brought Miss Yorke?”

Her voice was shallow, sweet and tremendously eager, but at the same time – what shall I say? – bodiless. From its eagerness I might have been a celebrity. Poor old thing, I thought, what a life she must lead when the visit of an Irish undergraduate thrills her like that!

“Yes,” whispered Adela, hardly audibly. Her voice was so faint, so quavering, that I looked round at her sharply. Her face was ashen, her lips colourless, her eyes vacant as if with sheer naked panic. Her tongue passed incessantly over her white lips. She reminded me of a hypnotised rabbit.

“How very kind of her,” murmured the old lady. “Bring her here, Adela – I can’t come to you, Miss Yorke, you must forgive me – I’m an old woman – lame and blind…”

And sick, too, I thought, as I took her tiny shrunken hand, for it was burning as if with fever, and tremulous with something that I did not think was age alone. It was more like the quivering of intense excitement. What a life, I thought! What a life they must lead, those two women in that big, lonely comfortable house, when the young one was a mass of terrors and alarms and the old one feverish with excitement over a visit from a girl she could not even see!

“I can’t see you with my eyes,” the old lady said then. “I wonder if you will let me see you with my fingers? Will you let me feel your face?”

“Of course,” I said, and knelt down beside her.

If I had guessed at all what that ordeal would be like, I would never have assented. I cannot describe the utter loathing and repulsion that filled me as the tiny, soft, hot hands passed like feathers over my face. It was horrible, sickening – like allowing some dreadful unclean insect to crawl about one’s face, up to the roots of my hair, down my cheeks, round my eyes, along my chin and neck… I could hardly restrain my utter disgust, although, when at last her hands dropped, and I rose, rather unsteadily, to my feet, I could not understand my own loathing. I shook myself impatiently, angry at my own folly.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to remain beside her for very long. She kept Adela – her gesture was at once commanding and excited, as she asked her to stop for a few minutes, though her voice was as soft and sweet as ever – and I was given over into the charge of an elderly, most respectable-looking maid; but she, too, was odd. She was quiet, efficient, everything she should have been: but she had the face of a sleepwalker. There was not a flicker of expression on it. Her eyes were open, but wholly expressionless; they might have been made of glass, except that they were dull, like the eyes of a dead animal. Quiet, orderly, deft as she was, she made me shiver a little. It was like being waited on by an automaton, or a somnambulist. I got rid of her as soon as I could, saying that I preferred to dress myself; and turning at once to the dressing-table; and it was then that I got a real shock. For, looking in the mirror, my back to her, I saw that she turned at the door, and I caught a glance of a white face distorted by a look of such malignance as I had never dreamed possible. It was utterly inhuman, devilish. I whipped round – but she had gone, the door closed silently behind her. I must have imagined it, I thought, taking up my brushes; some trick of reflection – some odd effect of the mingled twilight and electric light… I dressed quickly, though, and went downstairs as soon as I could. I felt I wanted company.