Part 9

He put his head out of the kitchen window and inhaled the summer air in long rapturous draughts. Jove, what a day for picnicking!

‘Hullo!’ cried Betty, at his back. ‘What do you think you’re achieving by that? You can’t stop to do your breathing exercises now. Why, you haven’t packed the sandwiches yet!’

Arnold wheeled round and saluted her in military fashion--a form of humour then in vogue. ‘Sorry, sir!... Anyhow, have you finished washing up your dixies?’

Betty regarded him with severity. ‘Yes, of course. Haven’t I got my hat on and waiting for you!’

He repeated the question reflectively. ‘Haven’t I got my hat on and waiting for you?... In what sense is your hat waiting for me, Betty? As the dear general said in Bernard Shaw, I’m only a silly soldier-man. Don’t harass my poor intelligence.’

‘Oh, grammar!’ She annihilated grammar with one pout. Her quick fingers stacked the sandwiches, and wrapped them in grease paper snatched from the table drawer. ‘Come along.... No, _I’m_ going to carry the haversack. You bring the thermos.’

They stepped out of the bungalow and into rural Buckinghamshire. It was certainly a unique morning. Earth had never before been so fresh, breathed such fragrance; never before had the sky bent so intimately over her. After an hour’s walking down narrow lanes between sweet-smelling hedgerows, and over hills bordered by pinewoods, the two friends turned into a field-path. Tall feathery grasses, red-brown dock-flowers and yellow charlock trembled ever so slightly as in a trance of ecstasy; clover and ladies’-fingers, buttercups and celandine seemed to Arnold’s imagination to be so many mute faces, absurdly knowing, wonderfully content. When they reached their second stile he paused, and Betty with him. The meadow beyond was a symphony in green and yellow: a curving sweep of long grass and buttercups, dazzled with sunlight; and on the far side, by a pond, black-and-white cows were browsing in the shadow of tall elms, some dreaming over a celestial cud, some stooping to the water, some cropping the jade-green grass with soft enfolding lips.

‘How still it looks,’ said Betty.

He nodded, drowsed by beauty, yet stabbed by beauty’s pain. He wondered if he were seeing this vision of England for the last time. ‘And how alive,’ he answered. ‘It’s as if the whole field were breathing and feeling. Dare we go into it? It’s like walking over some one’s face.’

Perhaps in that moment that three-days-hence future thrust its ugly face into Betty’s. Perhaps she recalled Arnold’s solitary lapse from soldierly reticence, when he had said: ‘It’s not the actual fighting or the danger. It’s the filth. And chance sights. A decaying human hand sticking out of the side of a trench--things like that.’ Perhaps she recalled this, for her face grew unaccountably tense.

‘Come along, Arnold, that’s where we’re going to have lunch. By that stream.’ She scrambled over the stile before he could offer to help her. He followed in a more leisurely fashion, a little disappointed that she had broken the spell of that meadow’s loveliness.

They sauntered across the field, and climbed another stile. Then, skirting the hedge to the left, they followed the brook until they found an agreeable resting-place on the sloping grassed bank. They sat down a few yards from the pond where, as in a picture, the cows were grouped, knee-deep in cool grass. Into that little lake, which reflected the sky’s blue and gold, the brook ran clear over a pebbly bed. Arnold, embracing his knees, rested his chin on them and stared into the water, admiring the contours and colours of the smooth, delicately-enamelled stones, and straining the imagination to share the lives of the minute creatures that were borne past in the stream. Betty watched him with a covert sidelong look.

A unique morning, yes; and a unique friendship of which Arnold was immeasurably proud. Beautifully at peace, he found delight in contemplating their relationship. He and Betty were the most staunch of comrades. There was implicit trust between them, unshakable fidelity, and never a thought of love. He could not believe that ever before had a man and a girl achieved such intimacy without being betrayed into a wish for a more passionate symbol of that intimacy than mere talk. But to Arnold, who was still in his earliest twenties, talk was the best thing in the world. And what talks he had had with Betty! With what glorious candour she had disclosed to him the secret places of her mind, places to which even her mother and sisters had never been admitted! For Arnold it was a fascinating and a sacred experience; and if Betty’s respect for his intellect was exaggerated, her absolute trust in his honour was at least well-founded. It was this absolute trust that added to their friendship the delicious flavour of romance. They exchanged ideas--on life, on religion, on sex, especially on sex--with utter unreserve, and with no hint of concession to vulgar notions of propriety.

‘Look at those jolly little red worms,’ said Arnold, pointing to the water. ‘I used to dote on those things when I was a kid.’

‘They’re lovely.’ Betty paused before adding, a trifle consciously: ‘Childhood’s the best time, isn’t it? I wish I had a baby.’

He glanced up with quick interest. ‘Well, why not?’

‘Ah, why! I’ve been married five years. At first we couldn’t afford it, and now--well, something’s wrong. For two years or more we’ve been hoping for a child.’

‘Rotten luck!’ Arnold looked back at the stream.

‘Yes. I wanted to tell you. You see, there’s something wrong with Charlie.’

Arnold became alarmed. ‘Something ... physiological?’

‘Yes. The doctor told him. Nothing very dreadful, I believe, in the ordinary way. But it makes it improbable that he’ll ever have a child.’

‘And he wants one?’

Betty turned her head away for one moment. ‘_I_ want one; I want one bitterly. And he too, in his way.’

Arnold kept his gaze steadily upon the moving water, lest he should see her tears. He was shocked to think that this girl, so robust, so affectionate, so ripe for motherhood, should be cheated by the accident of marriage of a tremendous experience. And why must it be so? In a sensible society would it be so? Before he had begun to work out all the implications of that challenge, Betty spoke again.

He was amazed to hear her phrasing his own thoughts. ‘If people were decent-minded, it wouldn’t so much matter,’ she said. ‘There could be a temporary marriage with someone else.’

Arnold was delighted with this proof of her emancipation. ‘Exactly. Nothing simpler. But society won’t change in a hurry. No use waiting for society. It rests with you and Charlie.’

‘He would agree, of course. He would do anything for my happiness.’

Arnold glowed in agreement. Charles was a good fellow, the best fellow in the world; he had a level head and a wonderfully rational outlook. Nothing niggardly about Charles.... And then an extraordinary thought presented itself. Why could not he himself give Betty her heart’s desire? Could she possibly have any such notion in her mind? Was it possible that she liked him enough for that? The dream blossomed in his imagination. He saw the baby laughing up at him from its cradle; saw it growing up as the son of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Cowley. He himself would see the boy--for a boy it would be--only occasionally, and he would be known as ‘Uncle Arnold’ or some such nonsense. The situation would be quite impossibly romantic, like something in a novel, and yet a triumph of decency and good sense over vulgar middle-class morality. Betty and he would resume their friendship unchanged and desiring no change. His respect for her was invincible. She was the wife of his friend, and that she would always be. He conceived the whole episode dispassionately, an act of pure friendship. Was it possible that she...? No, it was not possible. Talk was all very well, but confronted with the need for action she would falter. His thoughts had been mere presumption. Some other man, perhaps, but he--he could not expect so great an honour, and certainly he could not seek it. If she had meant that she would have said so. Of that he was sure. He dared not make a suggestion that might be repellent to her: she would be so cruelly embarrassed, and the perfection of their comradeship would be marred for ever.

And yet, in a situation so excessively delicate, he must venture something if he wished to be her friend. He tried to say: ‘You know I too would do anything to make you happy.’ But the words as they formed in his mind frightened him. How could he make her realize the utter purity and loyalty of his desires?

Despite his bewilderment he felt the moment to be exquisitely rich in beauty and in destiny. The pause lengthened. At last he stammered, ‘In that event, of course, you would ask ... some friend.’

‘Yes.’ Betty’s tone was cold. ‘Forgive me for boring you.’ She jumped up. ‘I’m getting stiff. Shall we move on?’

Something had gone wrong. Arnold grappled feverishly with the incomprehensible. Had he said too much? No, too little. Betty was already walking away. He could see only her back. When he caught her up, the sight of her pride made him angry with himself; yet he felt tongue-tied. He knew that he had failed her in a supreme crisis. Could he have had that opportunity again he would for her sake have risked all, and said, ‘Let me be the father of your child.’ But she was talking now, rather volubly and consciously, of indifferent things. Nothing would ever be the same again. Anger, jealous anger, flamed in his heart against the child, never to be born, who stood like a ghost between them, severing their friendship.

THE HOUSE AT MAADI

THE HOUSE AT MAADI

PART THE FIRST

_An Afternoon in April_

‘Ugliness, squalor, is only a nuisance,’ he told himself. ‘It is beauty that hurts.’ Even in the house at Maadi, the house that held Rosemary Fairfield, he could lose himself in musing; and he remained lost until he became aware that a tall elderly woman with fine eyes and silvering hair moved across the room to greet him.

‘You’re Mr. Redshawe, of course. I’m Rosemary’s mother. It was so good of you to come.’ The young man’s evident shyness moved her to add, ‘You _have_ met Rosemary, haven’t you?’

‘Thank you.’ He found his voice at last. ‘Yes, I had that pleasure three days ago in Cairo. She was in the company of Mr. Bunnard, my chief.’

‘My brother-in-law,’ said Mrs. Fairfield. ‘You like your work?’

‘Well,’ began Redshawe, ‘an Irrigation Company....’

His hostess smiled. At ease now, and reposing in the charm of her Irish voice and the kindliness of her speaking eyes, he smiled in return. As he looked into her lined face he felt that by holding himself very still he could almost hear the silken rustle of beauty’s vanishing skirts.

‘Tell me,’ Mrs. Fairfield said, leaning forward a little, ‘does my brother-in-law do any work, or do you and the rest do it all?’

He stared a moment at the dubious crease in his trousers. When he looked up, with a slight smile, ‘I’ve a tremendous respect for Mr. Bunnard,’ he assured her. ‘More than respect, if it’s not presumptuous to say so. But of course he’s a very big wig indeed, don’t you see? It’s only natural that he shouldn’t _do_ very much.’

Mrs. Fairfield glowed maternally at the sight of his blushes.

‘How very nice you are,’ she surprised herself by saying, with the shadow of a tremor in her voice. ‘I’m so glad you came.’

He blushed again as he answered: ‘I’m most amazingly glad. I was terrified at first.’

Her smile was friendlier than ever.

‘Not of me, I’m sure. Of Mrs. Bunnard, perhaps. She is a very positive person--always has been.’

He wanted to blurt out: ‘No, it was your daughter that I was afraid of’; but he could not shake off the grip of his reticence.

‘So are all of that cult,’ he said. ‘They teach one their entertaining guesswork as though it were an exact science.... And Miss Fairfield--is she too a believer?’

‘Rosemary is rather a baffling girl,’ replied Rosemary’s mother. ‘She spends a lot of time with her aunt, and listens, listens. Yes, that is almost all there is to be said about Rosemary: she listens. At this moment she is no doubt at the Cairo Lodge, hearing about Yoga and Prana and Kamaloka.’

‘And other patent breakfast foods,’ said Redshawe, with a cadence so bitter as to bring wonder into his new friend’s eyes.

‘It would be a pity, don’t you think,’ he answered the question in her glance, ‘if she took all that stuff seriously?’

‘Aren’t _you_ a little positive?’ she quizzed him.... ‘Ah, here is Mr. Bunnard.’

Almost boyishly diffident, the spare familiar figure of Redshawe’s chief sidled towards them. Mr. Bunnard was rather above medium height, but his earnest concentration on the pattern of the carpet made him seem smaller. When he raised his head a pair of ingenuous wondering eyes peered, through the circular lenses of his gold-rimmed spectacles, upon a new world.

‘Ah, Redshawe,’ said Mr. Bunnard, focussing his mild radiance upon the young man as they shook hands, ‘you’ve come then. How very nice.’

‘You’re just in time to tell us about the Atlantians, Dick,’ Mrs. Fairfield greeted him, with the air of having been discussing the Atlantians all the afternoon.

‘_Very_ nice,’ repeated Mr. Bunnard, peering from one to the other.

‘Yes, I’ve come, sir,’ said Redshawe, ‘and I’ve brought every one of my seven bodies with me.’

Mr. Bunnard considered this remark with a smile that revealed for the fraction of a second an excellent set of artificial teeth.

‘Ah, you haven’t forgotten our little talk then.... But you’ve got a lot to learn yet. Seven planes and all interpenetrating. Is Hypatia at home, Sheila?’

‘My dear Dick! She is at the Lodge, of course, and Rosemary is with her. I expect we had better not wait tea for them. They’ll probably have something in Cairo.’

‘Perhaps Hassan will get us some tea,’ ventured Mr. Bunnard, ‘if we ask him.’

As though to his cue, the white-smocked, red-tarbooshed Hassan, the Berber servant, appeared at this moment in the doorway bringing tea on a large tray. In response to Mrs. Fairfield’s nod he shuffled noiselessly into the room, bowing and smirking in his expansive Oriental fashion, and set out the tea-things on an occasional table.

‘Seven planes and all interpenetrating,’ said Mr. Bunnard, appearing to extract a peculiar comfort from the idea. ‘We generally take tea in the French manner--or is it the Russian?--with lemon juice instead of milk. By the by, I’ve got some Thought Forms up in my den, Redshawe, that might interest you. Angry, affectionate, ambitious, pure, envious, sensual, and so on: all accurately coloured, you know. I’ve spent a lot of time on them. You’re not eating anything. I can recommend the shortbread: it came all the way from Scotland.’

Mrs. Fairfield, roused by a sound outside, turned in the act of filling Redshawe’s cup for the fifth time, to look out of the window.

‘Here are the truants,’ she said, ‘and we’ve nearly finished.’ And Redshawe, following her glance, saw the miraculous Rosemary standing on the gravel path outside. To his excited imagination it seemed that she was but for an instant poised lightly upon this globe before flying back to the paradise from which she had descended.

Then indeed came the whirlwind followed by the still small voice. Mrs. Bunnard, tall, angular, and, though quiet, masterful, with conscious power invaded the room: power which, however, broke like a spent wave on the adamant rock of Redshawe’s absorption in Rosemary Fairfield.

‘Mr. Redshawe, how are you?’ said Mrs. Bunnard, grasping his hand. ‘We have never been introduced, but I know you perfectly. This is my niece.’

‘We have met already,’ fell like a benediction from the lips of Rosemary, as she gave him her hand.

‘Now let us take our things off,’ said Mrs. Bunnard with ferocious good humour. ‘Come, Rosemary!’

A moment later Redshawe was conscious of having stared at the departing vision. The exodus completed by Mr. Bunnard, he turned to find the thoughtful eyes of Rosemary’s mother upon him. Divining that she had read some of his mind he became confused.

Mrs. Fairfield rose to ring the bell: an action so startling to the disordered nerves of Redshawe that he breathed deep relief when, a moment later, he heard her ask Hassan to make some fresh tea for the ladies. His hostess came back into the bay of the room and stared out at the clustering purple masses of bougainvillea that hung from the white house, her hands playing listlessly with a fly-whisk.

‘This is the coolest part of the house till the sun goes down,’ she said, in a tone so void of expression as to fix his instant attention. ‘Afterwards we will sit out on the piazza, and perhaps Rosemary will play to us.’

‘That will be delightful,’ he answered, politely acquiescent; but his mind was asking: ‘What is the matter? What is she going to say?’

He became agitated with the expectation of hearing something momentous about Rosemary. But, after a pause, Mrs. Fairfield did but add the commonplace remark that his was an uncommon name.

‘Yes.’ Disappointment and relief strove together in his tone.

‘Are you the son of a certain Stephen Redshawe, I wonder?’

‘Yes,’ he said again, with quickening interest.

‘You have his eyes,’ she assured him with a smile, and turned quickly to the window.

‘By Jove, you knew my father?’ He got out of his chair in his astonishment, and found himself, with a sense of shock, face to face with an old woman who smiled at him wanly.

‘Yes, many years ago.’

‘He never mentioned----’ he began; and stopped, blushing for his gaucherie. As if in atonement, ‘Please talk to me about my father, if it won’t distress you,’ he pleaded.

After a long silence, ‘Not now,’ she said. ‘There’s a story I can never tell you. But we’re going to be good friends, you and I, and some day we’ll have a long talk about your father.’

Embarrassed, he murmured lame thanks.

‘There’s forty years between us,’ she added, half to herself. ‘So we shall be good friends.’

The door was slightly ajar and in the contracted doorway flashed the smile of Mr. Bunnard.

‘Come along, Redshawe,’ chirped Mr. Bunnard. ‘The ladies are coming down to their tea. Slip away while you can and have a look at my Thought Forms.’

Redshawe, obeying this unwelcome summons, mused deeply on the story that he was never to hear.

PART THE SECOND

_Sheila Dyrle_

1

Somewhere, no doubt, in Sheila’s personality, the story was written down; and she could have turned for young Redshawe the pages that she so seldom and so reluctantly turned for herself. She was an emotional but not a sentimental woman, and retrospect was a melancholy luxury that for the most part she denied herself. So far as she could she denied it to herself now, although the young man had troubled the deep waters of her mind. If for a moment she looked back her life appeared to her as a fruitless quest for something--who knows what?--for beauty, for happiness, for an absolute and harmonious intimacy, for everlasting fulfilment in a love that is the answer to all questions. Intimations of such a reality had again and again quickened desire within her. But, even in the moment of stretching out the hands to clasp it, ‘beauty vanishes, beauty passes’....

* * * * *

Half a century before, in her early teens, Sheila had emerged from her sister’s bedroom into the green distempered corridor of the school infirmary, hotly denying in her heart that Helena was dying. She wondered at the obtuseness of these people who had seen the sweet bloom of Helena’s cheeks and the lustre of her eyes, and yet drained their vocabulary of euphemisms hinting at death. Weak and wasted indeed she was, but full, still, of the serene joy that was her peculiar gift to the world. God couldn’t be so foolish or so cruel as to let Helena die. That would surely have been too sorry a joke even for the deity of Aunt Hester’s imagination.

‘Why is every one so silly?’ she complained to Aunt Hester, who had waited in trembling silence till her coming. ‘Helena’s getting better. Of course she is.’

‘Yes, dear,’ agreed Aunt Hester submissively. ‘Did you have a nice talk?’

‘We couldn’t let her talk much. She’s still so weak. But she said she would soon be out and about again.’

Tears began trickling down the lined leathery cheeks of Aunt Hester: cheeks that had suddenly the grotesque air of having been corrugated for the sole purpose of being wept upon. ‘Poor darling! Did she say that?’

‘Oh, aunt, why will you believe those silly people?’ Sheila’s voice rang out. ‘She must get well--she _must_!’

‘We must hope on,’ quavered Aunt Hester, furtively dabbing her eyes with a little sodden ball of handkerchief.

Sheila, alone in her faith, succumbed to the fear that tried to hide itself in anger. ‘It’s too bad,’ she said. ‘It’s a beastly shame ... to give up hope. Think how _well_ she looks! She’s been making plans for the summer holidays.’

At that Aunt Hester turned away her head, hunched up her back, and frankly sobbed, leaning against the back of a chair. All her prim dignity had vanished, and for the first time Sheila saw in her aunt an old frail woman. The shock of that discovery passing, she stared for a moment in sullen misery at the queer-shaped convulsive figure; then turned abruptly away and went, dry-eyed, into their bedroom.

In bed she thought she could hear her sister’s voice in delirium, although she knew that there were two walls and a passage between them: it muttered interminably until she had to bite her lips together to prevent herself from screaming. Aunt Hester soon came into the room, undressed herself by moonlight, and tumbled on to her knees. She remained kneeling, with her face and arms lying limply across her bed, for what seemed hours; and Sheila stared stupidly at the ceiling and strained her ears at every trivial sound. For a moment she closed her eyes....

And when she opened them again, birds were chattering outside her window and pale dawnlight, like a ghost, was in the room. ‘Like a ghost,’ Sheila said, and shuddered. Aunt Hester was not there; her bed had not been slept in.

Sheila got quickly out of bed, a dry sob of fear breaking from her, and ran barefooted into the green corridor. She stood quite motionless for a while, one hand resting on the door handle, and listened; tiptoed a few steps up the passage, her eyes fixed dreadfully on the room that held Helena; and drew back again. Time became a throbbing agony. Her thought dizzied itself by ceaselessly revolving round the glazed white door that had brass figures, 17, screwed upon its middle panel, but her eyes steadily stared. ‘Seventeen,’ said some chattering thing in her brain: ‘that’s her age. Is that why they put 17, or is it a coincidence?’ But she was not to be distracted by silly questions. The door began to open.