PART TWO

1

They were coming back. When she knew this she dared not venture beyond the garden for fear of encountering them unexpectedly. Only the dark was safe; and night after sleepless night she jumped out of the kitchen window into the garden, and crossed the lawn’s pattern of long tree-shadows, sharp-cut upon the blank moon-blanched level of the grass. All the colours were drained away; only the white spring flowers in the border shone up with a glimmer as of phosphorus, and the budding tree-tops were picked out, line by cold line, in a thin and silvery wash of light.

She went dancingly down the garden, feeling moon-changed, powerful and elated; and paused at the river’s edge. The water shone mildly as it flowed. She scanned it up and down; it was deserted utterly, it was hers alone. She took off her few clothes and stepped in, dipping rapidly; and the water slipped over her breasts, round her shoulders, covering all her body. The chill water wounded her; her breath came shudderingly, in great gasps; but after a moment she started to swim vigorously downstream. It was exquisite joy to be naked in the water’s sharp clasp. In comparison, the happiness of swimming in a bathing suit was vulgar and contemptible. To swim by moonlight alone was a sacred and passionate mystery. The water was in love with her body. She gave herself to it with reluctance and it embraced her bitterly. She endured it, soon she desired it; she was in love with it. Gradually its harshness was appeased, and it held her and caressed her gently in her motion.

Soon next door loomed lightless among its trees. If they were there, they were all sleeping. No eyes would be staring in the darkness, gazing at the enchanted water, wondering at the dark object moving upon its surface.

But no, they had not come yet: the moon came from behind a cloud and illumined the face of the great house; and it was grief-stricken as ever, bowed down with the burden of its emptiness. She turned back and swam home.

The night of full moon came, warm and starry. As she swam towards the willows at the far edge of the next-door garden,--her usual goal--she saw lights in the windows. The long house spread itself peacefully under the moon, throwing out its muffled warmth of lamplight like a quiet smile.

So they had come.

Somebody might be in the garden,--on the river even. She clung close under the bank, by a willow stump, not daring to move, feeling her strength ebb from her.

Then all at once their forms, their voices were near her. Somebody started to play a nocturne of Fauré: Julian. Before her she saw someone tall, in a pale frock, walking along the lawn: Mariella. A moment after a man’s figure came from the shadows and joined hers. Which was he? The twin glow of their cigarettes went ahead of them as they paced slowly, arm in arm, across the lawn, just as Charlie and Mariella had often paced in the dreams.

They were so near they must in a moment look down and see her; but they passed on a few steps and then paused, looking out over the river, and up at the resplendent moon. The piano stopped, and soon another figure came and joined them. They were three tall shadows: their faces were indistinguishable.

‘Hullo!’ said the small clear unchanged voice of Mariella, ‘I can’t understand your music, Julian. Nor can Martin, can you, Martin?’

‘Well it’s so damned dull. No tune in it.’

Julian’s brief laugh came for answer.

It was like all the dreams to listen to these voices dropping, muted but distinct, from invisible lips close to you in the dark, saying trivial things that seemed important because of the strangeness and surprise of the meeting.

‘Why don’t you,’ said Martin, ‘play nice simple wholesome things that we can have on the brain and hum and whistle all day?’

‘I’m not simple and wholesome enough to do them justice. I leave them to your masterly right index, Martin.’

‘Martin’s the world’s finest one-finger man, aren’t you?’ from Mariella, teasing, affectionate.

‘Where’s Roddy?’

‘He went off alone in the canoe.’

‘How romantic,’ said Mariella.

There was a groan.

‘Mariella, why will you----’

‘What?’

‘Quack,’ said Julian. ‘You _must think_ before you speak.’

She laughed.

‘Good-night,’ she said. ‘I’m going to bed. When you come upstairs mind and be quiet past the nursery. Remember it’s not _your_ nursery but Peter’s now. Nannie’ll warm your jacket if you wake him again, Martin.’

Her cigarette end hit the water a few inches from Judith. Her whitish form grew dim and was gone.

‘What a night!’ said Julian, after a silence. ‘The moon is a most theatrical designer.’

The two strolled on,--none too soon, for the water was glacial to her cramped body, her fingers were rigid upon the willow-roots, and her teeth were rattling in her head.

She heard from Martin:

‘When I was in Paris with Roddy----’

And then after a long pause, Julian’s voice suddenly raised: ‘But what if you bored _yourself_ ... day after day ... to myself: _Christ!_ You _bloody_ bore....’

The voices sank into confusion and ceased; but in the ensuing silence they seemed to follow her and repeat themselves, charged with the portentous significance of all overheard fragments of speech; so that she felt herself guiltily possessed of the secrets of their hearts.

The moon shone full on the garden bank when she lifted herself out, exhausted, and lay down on the grass.

Around her the shadows stood still. Her body in the moonlight was transfigured into lines of such mysterious purity that it seemed composed less of flesh than of light. She thought: “Even if they had seen me they wouldn’t have thought me real.”... Martin would have been astonished if not shocked; he would have turned politely away, but Julian would have appraised her curves, critically and with interest. And Roddy,--Roddy was so long ago he was incalculable. But if that someone dark and curious, with Roddy’s face, cherished for years in the part of you which perceived without eyes and knew without reason,--if he had seen, he would have watched closely, and then withdrawn himself from the seduction, from the inconvenience of his own pang; and watched from afar, in silence.

“Oh, Roddy, when will you come and reveal yourself?”

The swim home had warmed her, but now, in spite of excited pulses, she felt the cold beginning to strike deeply. She got up and stood still a moment: soon she must hide her silver-white body in the cloak, and then it would cease to be a miracle.

As she stooped for the garment, she heard the long soft ripple and plash of a paddle; a canoe stole into view, floating down full in the middle of the stream. She gathered her dark cape round her and stepped back into the shadows; and as she watched the solitary figure in the stern she forgot to breathe.

‘Oh, turn! Oh, turn!’ she sent after him silently.

But if he did she would dissolve, be swallowed up....

He did not turn his head; and she watched him go on, past the next-door garden and still onward;--going on all night perhaps....

If only he had seen her he would have beckoned to her.

‘Judith, come with me.’

‘I will.’

And all night they would have floated on together.

Some day it would happen: it must. She had always known that the play of Roddy must be written and that she must act in it to the end--the happy end.

‘Oh, Roddy, I am going to love you.’

The diminishing, unresponsive blot which was he passed out of sight.

* * * * *

Half way back to the house she stopped suddenly, overcome with bewilderment; for that had been Roddy’s self, not his shadow made by the imagination. The solitudes of the darkness now held their very forms, were mysterious with their voices where for so long only imagined shapes had hovered in the emptiness.... They had slipped back in that lucid, credulous life between waking and sleep out of which you start to ponder whether the dream was after all reality--or whether reality be nothing but a dream.

2

Next day, with unreal ease, she met Mariella in the village. She came out of the chemist’s shop, and they were face to face. There she was, tall and erect, with her dazed green-blue crystal eyes looking without shadow or stain up-upon the world from between dark lashes; her eyes, that knew neither good nor evil,--the icy eyes of an angel or a devil. Under her black hat her short hair curled outwards, her pale smooth face preserved its childish oval, her lips just closed in their soft faint-coloured bow. The mask was still there, more exquisite than of old; yet when she smiled in greeting, something strange looked out for a moment, as if her face in one of its rare breakings-up had been a little wounded, and still retained the slightest, disturbed expression.

She seemed pleased.

‘Judith!... isn’t it?’

‘Mariella!’

‘Then you _are_ still here. We wondered.’

‘Yes. Still here.’

She seemed at a loss for what to say, and looked away, shy and ill at ease, her eyes glancing about, trying to hide.

‘We--we were wondering about you and we thought you must be away. We remembered you were brainy and Julian said you told him you were going to college or somewhere, so we thought p’raps that’s where you were. We thought you must be dreadfully frightening and learned by now. Aren’t you?’

‘Oh no!’

What reply was possible to such silliness?

‘You were always doing lessons,’ she said in a puzzled voice. Then with a smile: ‘Do you remember Miss Pim?’

‘Yes. Her false teeth.’

‘Her _smell_.’ She wrinkled her small nose. ‘I used to sit and get whiffs of her, and think of tortures for her. No wonder I was backward.’ She gave her little giggle and added nervously again: ‘Look here, when will you come and see us? We’d like it. This afternoon?’

‘Oh, Mariella, I’d love to.’

‘They’re all there. D’you remember everyone? Julian was demobilized a little while ago. He’s going back to Oxford in the autumn.’

‘And Martin and Roddy?’

‘Yes, they’re both there. Roddy’s just back from Paris. He’s supposed to be studying drawing there. Martin ought to be at Cambridge, but he’s had appendicitis rather badly so he’s missing the term.’

‘Are you glad to be back here?’

‘Oh yes, we all like it awfully. And it seems to suit the infant.’

‘That’s good.’

There was a pause. She had thrown off her last remark with careless haste, defying you not to know about the infant; and her eyes had escaped again, as if in dread. In the pause the gulf of things never to be said yawned for a moment beneath their feet; and it was clear that Mariella at least would never breathe her husband’s name.

‘I--I was just buying some things for him,’ she said. ‘Some things Nanny wanted. But you can’t get much here....’ Her voice trailed off nervously. Then:

‘This afternoon,’ she said. ‘Good-bye till then. Don’t come too early because the boys are always dreadfully lazy after lunch.’

She smiled and went on.

3

At five o’clock Judith surprised the parlourmaid by taking off her hat in the hall, wiped her perspiring hands and announced herself.

At the threshold of the sitting room she paused and gasped. The room, magnified by fear, seemed full of giants in grey flannels. Mariella detached herself from a vast crowd and floated towards her.

‘Hullo!’ she said. ‘Do you want tea? I forgot about it. We never have tea. I needn’t introduce, need I? You know every one.’ She put a light hand for a moment on Judith’s arm, and the room began to sink and settle; but the faces of the boys-next-door were nothing but a blur before her eyes as she shook hands.

‘D’you remember which is which?’ said Mariella.

Now she would have to look up and answer, control this trembling, arrest this devouring blush.

‘Of course I do.’

She lifted her eyes, and saw them standing before her, smiling a trifle self-consciously. That gave her courage to smile back.

‘You’re Martin--you’re Roddy--you’re----’ she hesitated. Julian stood aloof, looking unyouthful and haughty. She finished lamely--‘Mr. F-Fyfe.’

There was a roar of laughter, a chorus of teasing voices to which, plunged once more in a welter of blushes and confusion, she could pay no heed.

‘I thought you mightn’t like--might think me--I didn’t know if--you looked as if you----’ she stammered.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sure, that you should feel the need of any such formality,’ said Julian stiffly. He too was blushing.

‘It was only his shyness,’ mocked a voice.

Judith thought: ‘After all, he was always the friendly one.’ That he too should be shy restored her self-confidence, and she said looking full at him and smiling:

‘I’m sorry. Julian then.’

‘That’s better,’ he said, still stiffly; but he smiled.

Their faces had become clear to her now; but there was still a point of trouble and strangeness in the room,--the queer-looking sallow young man Roddy. Her eyes fluttered over him and went on to Martin. He smiled at her, and she took a step nearer to him.

‘Are you at Cambridge?’ she said.

‘I am.’

‘That’s where I’m going.’

‘Are you really?’

‘For what purpose?’ said Roddy softly.

‘Oh, to learn. I want to learn everything about literature--English literature anyway, from the very beginning,’ she said earnestly.

‘That’s precisely what Martin’s aiming at. Isn’t it, Martin, you bookworm?’

‘I don’t get on much,’ said Martin with a swift confiding smile. ‘I’m such an idle devil. And so slow.’

She pondered.

‘I don’t think I’m particularly clever,’ she said. ‘Do you suppose most girls who go to College are?’

‘Martin and I think they must be,’ said Roddy, twinkling. ‘They look it, I will say.’

‘I saw some when I went for my examination. They were very plain.’ There was laughter; and she added in strict fairness: ‘There were two pretty ones,--two or three.’

‘Then you intend to become a young woman with _really_ intellectual interests?’ said Roddy.

‘Oh yes. I think so.’

‘That’s rather serious.’

She became suddenly aware that they were all laughing at her and stopped, overcome with shame and dismay.

‘Never mind.’ Roddy was twinkling at her with irresistible gaiety, and his voice was full of caressing inflections. ‘Martin will be delighted to see you. But don’t go to Newnham or Girton. Awful places--Martin is terrified of them. Go to Trinity. He’ll chaperone you.’

‘Oh, give over, Roddy,’ said Martin indulgently smiling. ‘You’re too funny.’

‘I hope your appendicitis is better?’ asked Judith politely.

‘Much better, thank you.’ He made a little bow.

Nobody had anything more to say. They were not very good hosts. They stood around, making no effort, idly fingering and dropping the tags of conversation she offered them, as if she were the hostess and they most difficult guests. As in the old days, they formed their oppressive self-sufficient circle of blood-intimacy with its core of indifference if not hostility to the stranger. Charlie was dead, but now when they were all gathered together she felt him weighing, drawing them further aloof; and she wished miserably that she had not come.

They were all casually engaged by themselves. Roddy was cleaning his pipe, Martin and Mariella playing with a spaniel puppy. It floundered on to Martin’s lap, and a moment after:

‘Oh, again!’ came Mariella’s clear little pipe. ‘What an uncontrolled chap he is! I’m sorry, Martin.’

‘It’ll dry,’ said Martin equably surveying his trousers. ‘It’s nothing.’

Julian had sat down at the piano and was strumming _pianissimo_. Roddy took up the tune and whistled it.

‘What shall we do?’ said Mariella. She went on rolling the puppy.

Julian turned round in his playing and looked at Judith. Gratefully she went over and stood beside him. By the piano, watching Julian’s hands, she was isolated with him and need not be afraid.

‘Go on playing. Something of your own.’

He shook his head and said:

‘Oh, that’s all gone.’

What lines, what harshness the war had given his always furrowed face!

‘But it’ll come back.’

‘No. It was a feeble spark; and the God of battles has seen fit to snuff it. The war made some chaps poets--of sorts; but I never heard of it making anyone a musician.’

‘Well, you can still play.’

‘Oh, I strum. I strum.’ He sounded weary and disgusted. Was he saying to himself: ‘_Christ!_ You _bloody_ bore?’

‘I’d always feel--’ she struggled, ‘--compensated if I could strum as you do. Ever since I was little I’ve envied you to distraction.’

He cheered up a little and smiled, looking interested in the old way.

‘Play what you were playing last night.’

‘How do you know what I was playing last night?’

‘I was on the river and I heard you.’

‘Did you?’ He was flattered. It touched his imagination to think of himself playing out into the night to invisible listeners.

‘All alone, were you?’ He looked her over with alert interest.

‘Oh yes. I said to myself: that must be Mr. Fyfe playing.’

He laughed.

‘You know, you were monstrous.’

‘Not at all. It was you. You defied me to pretend I’d ever known you.’

‘Nonsense. I was looking forward to you. Last time was--When? Centuries ago.’

‘Yes. That skating time.’

‘Lord, yes. Another world.’

Abruptly he stopped his soft playing; and Charlie came pressing upon them, making himself remembered above all else on that day.

‘Why stuff indoors?’ said Mariella. ‘Come out, Judith.’

She followed Mariella almost light-heartedly. After all, she was the sort of girl who could talk to people, even amuse them. She had proved it with Julian; and success with the others might reasonably be expected to follow.

* * * * *

A child was playing on a rug under the cedar tree, and his nurse sat sewing beside him. Judith recognized her as a figure out of the old days, a dragon called Pinkie, Mariella’s nurse who had become her maid. Wrinkled, stern, with the fresh cheeks and clear innocent expression of an old nurse, she sat guarding Mariella’s son.

‘May I please take him, Pinkie?’ said Mariella. ‘Pinkie won’t let me touch him as a rule.’

‘You’re so careless,’ she said severely; then recognised Judith and beamed.

Mariella lifted the child easily and carried him under one arm to where the group of young men had formed by the river’s edge.

Judith watched him with a painful interest and wonder. Here in front of her was Charlie’s child: she must believe it.

He was a tall child of slight build and oddly mature looks for his two years. He had frail looking temples and a neck far too slender, it seemed, to support the large head covered with a shock of fine straight brown hair. He had Mariella’s dark lashes framing brilliant deep-set eyes, and nothing else of his parents save his pallor and a certain fine-boned distinction which no Fyfe could lack.

The circle was a barren thing; it could not stretch to enclose new life. Mariella’s child was outside and irrelevant. Sometimes a cousin put out a large hand to steady him, or whistled to him or made a grimace, squeaked his teddy-bear or shouted at him encouragingly when he fell down. They looked at him with tolerant amused faces like big dogs, mildly gratified when he paused, steadying himself for a moment with a hand on their knees; but they soon forgot about him. Julian alone appeared to have an interest in him: he watched him; and Mariella herself now and then for a moment watched Julian watching him.

It was absurd, incongruous, incredible that this should belong to Mariella, should have been begotten by Charlie, carried in her body for nine months, as any woman carries her child, born of her in the ordinary way with agony and joy, growing up to love and be loved by her, and to call her mother.

But anybody could have a child; even mysterious childish widows like Mariella, tragic dead young husbands like Charlie; the simple proof was there before her eyes. Yet Mariella was such a childless person by nature. It was as if her body had played a trick on her and conceived; but to the creature it had brought forth her unmaternal spirit bore no relationship. So it seemed; but you could never tell with Mariella.

‘Come here,’ said Judith, and held out her hand.

He stared, then edged away nervously.

‘Do you like children?’ asked Mariella politely.

‘I love them,’ said Judith, and then blushed, detecting a fatuous fervour in her voice. But, thank heaven, Roddy had strolled away with Martin and was out of hearing.

‘Do you?’ Mariella glanced at her and seemed to find nothing more to say. She pulled the puppy to her.

‘Good chap, go and play with Peter. Go on.’

‘Then Peter is his name.’

‘_Michael_ Peter,’ emphasized Julian mockingly. ‘Mariella had the highest motives; but I fear she has done for him. Michael alone or Peter alone he _might_ have stood up against--but the combination! I tremble for his adolescence. However he ought to have a spurious charm, at any rate until he leaves the university. The only hope is that he himself may find the double burden excessive, and cancel himself out to a healthy James or Henry. We could do with a Henry or so in our family. Perhaps after all we should commend your far-sightedness, Mariella?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said in her little cheerful voice. ‘I think Michael Peter is a very nice name. And he’s quite a nice boy, isn’t he?’

He was running up and down the lawn with the puppy in pursuit, pawing at him, nipping his calves, tripping him up. At first he bore it equably, but after a while stopped in distress, pushing at the dog with impotent delicate hands, nervously exclaiming and as if expostulating with him in a language of his own, but not once looking towards any of them for assistance. The puppy crouched before him, and all at once let out a sharp yelp of excitement. He put his hands up to his ears. His lip shook.

‘Damn that puppy!’ said Julian furiously. He strode over to his nephew and lifted him in his arms.

‘The boy’s tired, Mariella, and you know it, and there you sit, calmly, _calmly_,--and let that damn fool noisy puppy bully him and pester him and smash his nerves....’

He was white. He stared with naked antagonism at Mariella, and the air seemed to quiver and grow taut between them. She got up swiftly to catch the puppy and touched her son’s head in passing.

‘Poor Peter-boy,’ she said quietly. ‘Silly boy! It’s all right.’

‘I must go,’ murmured Judith.

It was unbearable. She must slip away and hide from the shame and shock of her own perception of the suppressed hysteria.

‘Must you go?’ Mariella smiled at her with a sort of sweet blankness. ‘Well--you must come again soon. Come often.’

‘I’ll see you to the door,’ said Julian. ‘I’m taking the boy in.’

Without another word or look Mariella went away; and he marched off into the house, carrying the child; and Judith followed him, sick at heart.

Everything had gone wrong. Martin and Roddy had not returned and she dared not seek them to say good-night. Alas, they would not care whether she did so or not since they had not been sufficiently interested in her to stay beside her. Even Martin did not want her, preferred Roddy. She had hoped to gain assurance enough to look at Roddy, once, calmly, and see him as he was; but in the few glances they had exchanged she had seen nothing but an unreality so poignant, so burning that it blurred her whole mind and forced her eyes to escape, helpless. To-night when she was in bed they would all come before her, haunting and tormenting, trebly indifferent and unpossessed now that this longed-for meeting was accomplished, a bitter and fruitless fact. Imagination at least had been fecund, it had fed itself:--but the reality was as sterile as stone. What might she have done, she wondered, that she had not done, how should she have looked in order to please them? Was it her clothes or her looks or her idiotic seriousness about college that had condemned her to them? Bleakly pondering, she followed Julian into the sitting room.

He sat down at the piano with the boy on his knee, and began softly playing. Judith stood beside him.

After a little the child flung his head back against Julian’s shoulder, raptly listening. When he did this Julian’s face smoothed itself out and all but smiled. He continued to play, then stopped and said:

‘Sit down. You needn’t go yet,’--and continued his quiet music.

To free his arms she gently took the child from him and set him on her own lap, where he sat motionless and as if unconscious of the change.

Gradually as she watched the crooked fingers sliding along the keys from chord to chord, and saw around her the familiar room, the past stole over her. He was the boy Julian and she the half-dreaming privileged listener; and as if there had been no gap in their knowledge of each other they sat side by side in unselfconscious intimacy. What had there been to fear? She saw now that she would always be able to pick him up just where she had left him, and find him unchanged to her; she could say anything to him without danger of mockery or rebuff. But he had always been the easiest: the sense of blood-relationship was tempered in him by his critical intelligence; and he was always prepared at least to sharpen his wits against the stranger, if not to befriend him.

He paused and she said:

‘Nothing has changed here. I remember every single thing in the room and it’s all the same,--even to the inkstains on those boards. It’s like a dream to be back here talking to you--one of those dreams of remembered places where everything is so familiar it seems ominous. I’ve often had a dream like this----’

She stopped, wishing her last words unsaid; but he took her remark to be general and nodded, and leaned forward to look at Peter, lying wan and sleepy in her lap. He was very tired; but not fretful: only silent and languid. Julian touched his cheek.

‘And is Peter part of the dream too?’ he asked softly.

‘Yes. Isn’t he?’

He was the passive, waiting core of the ominousness, the unexpected thing you shrank from yet knew you had to come back to find. In the dream, it was quite natural to sit there with Julian, holding Charlie’s child.

‘Isn’t it strange,’ he said musingly, ‘that this is the only proof--the _only_ proof that Charlie ever lived? A child! Not another whisper from him.... I haven’t even a letter. I suppose _she_ has.’ An utter misery showed for a moment in his face, and he paused before adding: ‘And no portrait. Do you remember him?’

‘Of course.’ Her throat ached with tears. ‘He was the most beautiful person----’

‘Yes he was. A _spring_ of beauty. He didn’t care about that, you know, in spite of what people said. His physical brilliance somehow obscured his character, I think, made it difficult to judge. But he had a very simple heart.’

Was it true? Who had ever known Charlie’s heart? Was not Julian speaking as it were in epitaphs, as if his brother had become unreal to him,--a symbol for grief,--the individual ghost forgotten? Perhaps Mariella alone of all people had known his heart--strange thought!--and still had him quick within her; but she would never tell.

‘It’s not often I speak of him to anyone,’ said Julian; and his usually narrow swift-glancing eyes suddenly opened wide and held hers as if he had some unendurable thought. They were pits of misery. What was he remembering?

After a long silence he took the boy on his lap again and said softly:

‘Peter shall play.’

Peter put out both his hands, and carefully, delicately dropped them on the keys, listening and smiling.

‘Is he musical?’

Julian nodded.

‘Oh yes. He’s that--more or less. I seem to detect all the symptoms.’

He looked down at the leaning head on his shoulder with a sort of harsh tenderness; and after a while he spoke again as if out of a deep musing.

‘What, one asks oneself, is she going to do about him?’

‘Mariella?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well--it’s more or less mechanical, with a boy, isn’t it? School and university,--and in his case, musical instruments?’

‘How _wretched_ he’s going to be,’ he said fiercely, ‘Can’t you _see_?’

‘She wouldn’t let him be wretched,’ she said, startled.

‘She?--she won’t know it! And if she did, she’d be helpless.’

‘Well, he’s got you.’

‘Me!’ He gave his bark of laughter.

‘I mean--you like him,’ she ventured timidly.

‘I can’t stand brats. And they can’t stand me.’

‘I’m not talking about brats. I’m talking about Peter. I thought you liked him.’

He laughed.

‘You look so shocked. Do _you_ like brats then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hmm--Well, I dare say Mariella says the same. In fact, I’ve heard her. She’s very correct, poor darling, in all her little contributions.’ He looked at the clock. ‘It’s time I took him up. Wait for me.’

When he came back he laughed again.

‘You still look shocked. I’m not a nice man, am I?’

‘I’m not thinking about you.’

After a pause he said:

‘It’s all right, Judy. You’re right. I do like him. But because I’m bound to feel, must I refuse to think?’

‘Think what?’

‘That he ought never to have been born.’

‘Oh!’ she blushed, horrified.

He flung at her:

‘What do you wish for the people you love? Life?’

‘Of course. Don’t you?’ She was confused, out of her depth.

‘No--God, no!’

‘Then what?’

‘Unconsciousness. Heavenly, _heavenly_ annihilation.’

‘Then why don’t you kill him?’ She was shocked at the sound of her own words.

‘Because I don’t love him enough.’ He laughed. ‘Luckily I don’t love anyone enough--never shall. Not even myself.’ He turned to the window and said, speaking low, with strained composure: ‘Sometimes--in moments of clear vision--I see it all, the whole futile sickening farce. But it gets obscured. So my friends are safe. Besides, I’m so damned emotional: if they implored me to save them I shouldn’t have the heart to argue how much wiser they’d be to die.’

She wondered with alarm if he were mad and sat silent, waiting in vain for an intelligent counter-argument to present itself. Finally she stammered:

‘But it’s not a futile sickening farce to normal people.’

‘Oh, normal people! they’re the whole trouble. They don’t _think_. They don’t see that you can’t miss anything of which you’ve never been conscious. All the things for which they value life--their food, their loves and lusts and little schemes and athletic exercises, all the little excitements--what are they but a desperate questioning: ‘What shall I do to be happy, to fill up the emptiness, leaven the dreariness? How can I best cheat myself and God?’ And, strange to say, they don’t think what a lot of trouble would have been saved if they’d never been--never had to go hunting for their pleasures or flying from their pains. A trivial agitation that should never have begun; and back into nothing again. How silly!... As you may have guessed, I am not altogether convinced of the One Increasing Purpose. I have the misfortune to be doubtful of the objective value of life, and especially of its pains. Neither do my own griefs either interest or purify me. So you see----’

He turned from the window and smiled at her.

‘Yet even I have my compensations: music, food, beautiful people, conversation--or should I say monologue?--especially this sort of bogus philosophy to which you have been so patiently listening. Do you agree with me, by the way?’

‘No. Do you?’

He laughed and shrugged.

‘Still,’ she added, ‘it’s a point of view. I’ll think about it. I can’t think quickly. But oh!----’ She stopped.

‘What?’

‘I’m so thankful I’ve been born.’ She blushed. ‘Even if I _knew_ you were right I wouldn’t feel it.’

‘Ah, you’ve never bored yourself. Perhaps you never will. I hope and believe it’s unlikely.’

She looked at him with distress. Poor Julian! He had to be theatrical, but his unhappiness was sincere enough. His jesting was so humourless, so affected that it crushed the spirit; and all his talking seemed less a normal exercise than a forced hysterical activity assumed to ease sharp wretchedness. It was not fair to judge and dislike him: he was a sick man.

He sat down again at the piano, and she rose on an impulse and went and stood beside him.

‘Some chaps dance,’ he said. ‘They haven’t stopped dancing since they’ve been back. I play----’ He plunged into a medley of ragtime--‘and play--and play--and play. Syncopation--gets you--right on the nerves--like cocaine--No wonder it’s popular.’

‘Do you like it?’

‘Intellectually,’ he said, ‘I adore it. It’s _so_ clever.’

He played on loudly, rapidly, with pyrotechnical brilliance, then stopped. ‘My passions, however, are too debile to be stirred.’

He flung round on the piano stool and dropped his face into his hands, rubbing his eyes wearily.

‘Julian--I wish you weren’t--I wish you could----’

He looked up, startled, saw her expression, looked quickly away again and gave an embarrassed laugh like a boy.

‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘You needn’t take any notice of me. I’m being a bore. I’m sorry.’ The last words were faintly husky.

‘Oh, you’re _not_ a bore, you’re not! Only--_don’t_ be so miserable.’

In the awkward silence that followed she said:

‘I must go.’

‘No, you’re not to go,’ he said gently. ‘Stay and talk to me.’ He paused. ‘The trouble is, I can’t sleep, you know, and it makes me a bit jumpy. I don’t like my thoughts, and they _will_, they _will_ be thought about. But I shall get better in time.’

‘Poor Julian!’

He allowed his face to relax, and his manner was suddenly quiet and simple, almost happy: the unexpected sympathy had made him cheerful.

‘You mustn’t go, Judith, you must stay to supper.’

‘I can’t. What will Mariella say?’

‘Mariella doesn’t say. Whether she _thinks_ is the problem,--or even _feels_. Is she a _very_ remarkable person? Or is it _simply_ arrested development?’

‘No. I don’t think so.’

‘Not?’

She smiled to herself, struck with a fancy.

‘Perhaps she’s a fairy, Julian.’

As she said it she grew suddenly thoughtful; for it had flashed upon her that perhaps that was the explanation of Roddy; perhaps he was a fairy, and in that case it was no use--he would never....

‘A fairy. I never thought of that.’ He mused, pleased with the idea. ‘You know it must mean something, that nobody’s _ever_ suggested giving her a _petit nom_, or curtailing the mouthful; she’s always been Mariella.’

He began humming a little tune in his contentment. Quickly she said:

‘Just to go back to Peter. You don’t mean it, do you? Why should he be wretched? Think of the things you can teach him. You know you’ll love that.’

He looked a trifle dashed; but after a moment his face cleared again, and his eyes smiled kindly at her.

‘Don’t worry. At all events, I’ll see he’s not ill-treated--except in my own way. That is, if she’ll let me. She will. She’s very good-tempered, I must say. She’s never allowed me to quarrel with her. She well might have.’

He looked like brooding again; but seeing her gazing at him anxiously, added:

‘It’s odd how natural it seems to be talking to you alone like this. You haven’t changed a bit. I always remember you listening so solemnly and staring at me. I’m so glad I’ve found you again. I could always talk to you.’

‘At me,’ she corrected.

He made a face at her, but looked cheerful. She had always known how near the edge to venture without upsetting him. He hummed his little tune again, then played it on the piano.

‘I think I made that up.... It’s rather a nice little tune. Perhaps I’ll take up my music seriously again.’

‘Oh, you must, Julian. It is so well worth it: such a special talent.’

He looked at her with sudden attention.

‘How old are you, Judith?’

‘Seventeen. Nearly eighteen.’

He studied her.

‘You must put your hair up.’

‘Must I?’

‘Yes, because then you’ll be beautiful.’

She was still speechless when Mariella, Martin, two Great Danes and the puppy came in.

* * * * *

‘Hullo!’ said Mariella. ‘Still here?’

‘I’m afraid so. But I’m just going.’

‘She’s not. She’s staying to supper,’ said Julian.

‘Oh, good,’ said Martin surprisingly; and his shy red face smiled at her.

‘Of course you must,’ said Mariella cheerfully. ‘We’re just going to eat now. Where’s Roddy?’

‘He stayed down at the boathouse. He said he’d come soon.’

‘He’d better,’ said Julian, and turning to Judith explained politely: ‘What with poor Martin having to build himself up so, experience has proved it’s wiser to be punctual.’

‘I’ll go and fetch him,’ said Judith, to her own surprise.

She left them amicably wrestling, and escaped light-heartedly into the garden. The cool air refreshed her brain, shaken and excited from its contact with Julian; and she walked slowly to the boathouse by the shrubbery path, sniffing as she went at wild cherry, japonica, almond and plum. It was joy to look for and recognize afresh the beauties of the garden; its unforgotten corners,--places of childish enchantment. Somewhere near, under the laurel, was the rabbit’s grave. She remembered that evening, how she had been shaken with revelation. This was just such another mysterious and poignant fall of the light: anything might happen. Her senses were so overstrung that the slightest physical impression hit her sharply, with a shock.

There on the raft was the curious young man Roddy. He raised his head from the examination of an old red-painted canoe, and smiled when he saw her.

‘I’m sent to say supper’s ready.’

‘Thank you very much. I’ll come.’

‘I’m staying to supper.’ She smiled radiantly at him, sure of herself and full of an immense amusement.

‘I’m delighted.’

His golden-brown eyes sent her their clear and shallow light.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Seeing if this old canoe is sea-worthy. You see, there’s a leak, but I don’t _think_ it’s anything much. I’ll leave her in the water over-night. I want to rig her up with a sail.’ He stroked the canoe lovingly.

‘You like going in boats, don’t you?’

‘I suppose I do rather.’

‘I like it too. Especially at night.’

But he would not give himself away. She saw him slipping down the stream, alone in his canoe, the night before, but she was not to know it, she could not say: ‘I saw you.’

He bent over his canoe, fingering the wood, then straightened himself and stood looking down the long willow-bordered stretch of water. The sun had gone out of it and it was a quiet grey limpid solitude. A white owl flew over, swooping suddenly low.

‘There he goes,’ said Roddy softly. ‘He goes every evening.’

‘Yes, I know.’

She smiled still in her immense mysterious amusement. She saw him look up at the poplar from whence the owl had come, and as he did so his whole image was flung imperishably on her mind. She saw the portrait of a young man, with features a trifle blurred and indeterminate, as if he had just waked up; the dark hair faintly ruffled and shining, the expression secret-looking, with something proud and sensual and cynical, far older than his years, in the short full curve of his lips and the heaviness of his under-lids. She saw all the strange blend of likeness and unlikeness to the boy Roddy which he presented without a clue.

He caught her smile and smiled back, all his queer face breaking up in intimate twinklings, and the mouth parting and going downward in its bitter-sweet way. They smiled into each other’s eyes; and all at once the light in his seemed to gather to a point and become fixed, dwelling on her for a moment.

‘Well?’ he said at last; for they still lingered uncertainly, as if aware of something between them that kept them hesitating, watching, listening subconsciously, each waiting on the other for a decisive action.

He spread out his hands and looked down at them; a nervous gesture and look she remembered with a pang.

‘Yes, we must go,’ she said softly.

At supper he sat opposite to her, and twinkled at her incessantly, as if encouraging her to continue to share with him a secret joke. But, confused amongst them all, she had lost her sense of vast amusement and assurance; she was unhappy because he was a stranger laughing at her and she could not laugh back.

Beside him was the face of Martin, staring solemnly, with absorption, watching her mouth when she spoke, her eyes when she glanced at him.

Thank God the meal was soon over.

* * * * *

A gay clipped exhilarating dance tune sounded from the drawing-room. Roddy had turned on the gramophone. He came and took Mariella without a word and they glided off together. Judith stayed with Julian and Martin in the verandah, looking in at them. She was frightened; she could not dance, so she would be no use to Roddy.

‘Do you dance, Julian?’

‘No. At least only with two people.’

Alas,--wounding reminder of his elegant unknown world where she had no place!... She blushed in the dusk.

‘Julian’s very lordly about his dancing;’ said Martin. ‘I expect he’s rotten really.’

‘It may be,’ said Julian, stung and irritable. ‘It may be that I therefore bestow the burden of my gyrations on the only two creatures of my acquaintance whose rottenness equals mine. It may be that I derive more satisfaction from the idea of this artistic whole of rottenness than from the physical delights of promiscuous contact.’

‘It may be,’ said Martin pleasantly, unperturbed.

Julian hunched his shoulders and went away, clouded by a dreadful mood.

‘Poor old Ju,’ said Martin softly.

‘Yes, poor thing.’ Her voice implied how well she understood, and he looked grateful.

In the drawing-room, Roddy and Mariella moved like a dream, smoothly turning, pausing and swaying, quite silent.

‘Well, shall we?’ Martin smiled down at her.

Now she must confess.

‘I can’t, Martin, I don’t know how. I’ve never learnt. I haven’t ever----’ Shame and despair flooded her.

‘Oh, you’ll soon learn,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Come and try.’

‘Oh, I couldn’t.’

She glanced at the competent interweaving feet of Mariella and Roddy, at Marietta’s slender back pivoting gracefully from the hips, at Roddy’s composed dancing-face and shoulders. She could not let them see her stumbling and struggling.

‘Well, come and practise in the hall. Here now. Can you hear the music? Follow me. This is a fox-trot. Look, your feet between my feet. Now just go backwards, following my movements. Don’t think about it. If you step on my feet it’s my fault and _vice versa_. Now--short, _long_, short, two short. Don’t keep your back so stiff,--quite free and supple but quite upright.’

‘Do it by yourself,’ said Judith perspiring with anxiety. ‘Then I can see.’

He chasséd solemnly round the hall, pausing now and then to show her how he brought his feet together; then, with a firm hand on her shoulder-blades he made her follow him.

‘That’s good. It’s coming. Oh, good! Sorry, that was my fault. You’ve got the trick now.’

All at once the music had got into her limbs; it seemed impossible not to move to it.

‘But you can!’ said Martin, letting her go and beaming at her in joyful surprise.

‘Come back into the drawing-room,’ said Judith, exalted. They went.

‘Now,’ she said trembling.

Martin put his arm round her and they glided off. It was easier than walking, it was more delicious than swimming or climbing; her body had always known how it was done. Martin looked down at her with eloquent eyes and said:

‘You know, you’re marvellous. I didn’t know anyone could learn so quickly.’

‘It’s because I’ve had such a good teacher,’ she said sweetly.

They went on dancing, and every now and then she looked up and smiled at him and his eyes shone and smiled in answer, happy because of her pleasure. He really was a dear. In his looks he had improved beyond expectation. He was still a little red, a little coltish and untidy, but his figure was impressive, with powerful heavy shoulders and narrow hips; and the muscles of his thigh and calf bulged beneath his trousers. His head with the brown wings of hair brushed flat and straight on it, was finely set, his eyes were dark and warm, kindly rather than intelligent; his nose was biggish and thick, his mouth long, thin and rather ineffectual, with a faint twitch at one corner,--the corner that lifted first, swiftly, when he smiled his frequent shy smile. His teeth were magnificent; and he smelt a little of Virginian cigarettes.

‘You must dance with Roddy,’ said Martin. ‘He’s ever so much better than I am.’

Roddy and Mariella were dancing in the porch now, not speaking or looking about them. The record came to an end, but they went on whirling while Martin sought a new tune and set it going; then they glided forward again.

Roddy had forgotten her: she was not up to his dancing.

At last Mariella stopped and disengaged herself.

‘I want to dance with Martin now,’ she said.

Roddy left her and strolled over to Judith.

‘Been giving Martin a dancing-lesson?’ he said.

‘Goodness, no! He’s been teaching me. I didn’t know how.’

‘Oh?--How did you get on?’

‘Quite well, thank you. It’s easy. I _think_ I can dance now.’

‘Good!’

It was plain he was not interested; or else was incredulous. He thought she was just a stumbling novice; he was not going to dance with her or even offer to go on teaching her. Roddy would never have bothered to give her hints or be patient while she was awkward. He was so good himself that he could not condescend to incompetence. But Judith, still, though more doubtfully, exalted, said:

‘Shall we dance?’

He looked surprised.

‘All right. Certainly. Just let me cool down a bit.’

He was not in any hurry. He sat on the table and watched Marietta’s neatly moving feet.

‘She’s good at her stuff,’ he said.

‘Do you adore dancing?’

‘Well, I don’t know that I adore it. It’s fun once in a way.’

‘It seems funny not to be mad about a thing if you can do it so beautifully.’

He looked at her with amusement.

She must remember not to ask Roddy if he adored things. His secret life went on in a place where such states of feeling were unknown.

‘Shall we?’ he said at last.

She was not going to be able to do it; the rhythm had gone out of her limbs. He was going to be too good for her and she would stumble and he would get disgusted and not dance with her any more....

After a few moments of anguish, suddenly she could, after all. Long light movements flowed from her body.

Roddy looked down.

‘But you can dance,’ he said.

‘I told you I could. You didn’t believe me.’

He laughed.

‘You don’t mean to tell me you’ve never danced before?’

‘Never.’

‘Swear?’

‘Cross my heart.’

‘But of course,’ said Roddy, ‘you couldn’t help dancing, such a beautiful mover as you.’

He had really said that! She lifted her face and glowed at him: life was too, too rich.

The music came to an end. Roddy stood still with his arm round her waist and called imperiously to Martin for another tune.

‘Come on,’ he said, and tightened his arm round her. You might almost dare to suppose he was a little, a very little exalted too.

‘But you do love it, Roddy!’

He looked down at her and smiled.

‘Sometimes.’

‘Do you now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Roddy!’

She was silenced by happiness.

They were alone now. Martin and Mariella were on the verandah, and she heard Mariella say:

‘Darlin’ Martin, fetch me my coat.’

‘Mariella’s very fond of Martin, isn’t she?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose she is. What makes you think so?’

‘I just heard her call him darling just now.’

He laughed.

‘Oh yes. She does that now and again.’

‘She doesn’t call you darling,’ said Judith twinkling.

‘No. Nobody ever does.’

‘Not anybody,--ever?’

‘Not _any_body--_ever_.’

‘What a pity! And it _is_ so enjoyable to be called darling.’

‘I’ve no doubt it is. I tell you I’ve no experience.’ He peered into her face, and repeated piteously: ‘Nobody _ever_ does.’

Judith laughed aloud.

‘I will,’ she heard her own voice saying.

‘You really will?’

She waited.

‘Go on,’ he urged.

The word would not come.

‘Go on, go on!’ he shouted triumphantly.

‘Oh, be quiet!’

‘Please!...’

‘No....’

She hid her face away from him and blushed. Laughing silently he gathered her up and started whirling, whirling. A deeper dream started. The room was a blur, flying, sinking away; only Roddy’s dark red tie and the line of his cheek and chin above it were real.

She laughed and gasped, clinging to him.

‘Giddy?’

‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’

He stopped and looked at her amusedly.

‘Oh, I _am_.’

She threw out an arm blindly and he caught it and supported her.

‘Come out on the verandah and get sober,’ he said.

The spring night greeted them with a chill fragrance. Roddy’s eyes were so bright that she could see them shining, brimming with amusement in the dim light.

‘What are you looking at, Roddy?’

‘You.’

‘I can see your eyes. Can you see mine?’ He bent his head over hers.

‘Yes, of course. They’re like stars. Lovely dark eyes.’

‘_Are_ they?... Roddy paying compliments,--how funny! Roddy, I remember you. Do you remember yourself when we were children?’

‘Not much. I never remember the past. I suppose I’m not interested enough--or interesting enough.’

She felt checked, and dared not ask the ‘What do you remember about me?’ which should have opened the warm little paths of childish reminiscence. Roddy had no desire to recall the uninteresting figures of himself and the little girl Judith: that trifling relationship had been brushed away as soon as it had ceased. She must realize that, for him, no long threads came dragging from the web of the past, tangling the present.

She stared into the dark garden, wondering what safe topic to propose.

‘When do you go back to Paris, Roddy?’

‘Oh,--soon, I suppose.’

‘Do you work very hard there?’

‘Terribly hard.’

‘Drawing or painting?’

‘Some of both. Nothing of either.’

‘I suppose you wouldn’t show me some of your things?’

‘Couldn’t. I’ve nothing here. I’m having a rest.’ He twinkled at her.

‘What a pity! I should so have loved.... Which are you best at, drawing or painting?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Drawing, I think. But I’m not any good. I just waste time.’

‘Why do you?’

‘Why indeed?’

‘How funny! If I could draw I’d draw all day. I’d be so excited at being able to, I’d go on and on. I’d be so horrid and enthusiastic. I wouldn’t have any sense of humour about it. You’d think me _nauseating_, wouldn’t you?’

He nodded, smiling.

‘But I’d _draw_. I’d be the best drawer in the world. Oh, you are lucky! I do envy people with a specialty, and I do love them. Isn’t it funny how fingers take naturally to one form of activity and not to another? Mine--mine--’ she spread them out and looked at them--‘mine wouldn’t draw if I spent all my life trying to make them; but--they know how to touch a piano--only a little of course; but they _understand_ that without having it explained. And some fingers can make lovely things with a needle and thread and a bit of stuff. There’s another mystery! Then there are the machine makers, and the ones that can use knives like artists to take away bits of people or put bits in,--and the ones that can remove pain just by touching.... Some people _are_ their hands, aren’t they? They understand with them. But most people have idiot hands,--destroyers. Roddy, why are some of our senses always idiots? All my senses are semi-imbecile, and I’m better off than lots of people, I suppose. Seems to me, what they call the norm is practically idiot, and any departure is just a little more or less so. Yet one has this _idea_ of perfection----’

She stopped abruptly. He was not interested, and his face in the wan light was a blank which might be hiding mockery or distrust of a girl who affected vaporous philosophizings, trying, no doubt, to appear clever. She flushed. Such stuff had been her food for years, chewed over secretly, or confided to the one friend, the Roddy of her imagination; and here she was in the foolishness of her elation pouring it out to this unmoved young man who thought--she _must_ remember this--that he was meeting her for the first time. It was plain, it must be plain to him, that she was a person with no notion of the rules of behaviour.

‘Come back and dance,’ suggested Roddy at last.

It was curious how much easier it was to get on with Roddy if he had an arm round you. His mind, the whole of him, came freely to meet you then; there was entire happiness, entire peace and harmony. It was far more difficult to find him on the plane where only minds, not senses, had contact,--the plane on which a Julian, one whose physical touch could never be desirable, was reached without any groping. Roddy put something in the way. He guarded himself almost as if he suspected you of trying to catch him out; or of taking an impertinent interest in him. His mind would be thrilling if you could dig it out: all hidden and withheld things were.

‘I don’t want ever to stop,’ she said suddenly.

‘We won’t,’ he promised and held her closer, as if he were as much caught away and dazed as she.

He bent his head and whispered laughingly:

‘Just say it.’

‘Say what?’

‘That word you like--in your delicious voice--just as a kindness.’

‘No, I won’t--now.’

‘When will you?’

‘You are naughty, Roddy.... Perhaps when I know you better.’

‘You’ll never know me better than you do now.’

‘Don’t say that. Why do you?’

‘There’s nothing more to know.’

‘Oh, if there’s nothing more to know, then you are----’

‘What?’

‘More or less--as far as I can tell----’

‘What?’

She whispered.

‘A darling.’

‘Ah, thank you.’ He added rapidly, in the full soft voice of laughter: ‘Thank you, darling.’

‘Now we’ve both said it. Roddy, aren’t we absurd?’

‘No, very sensible.’

‘Did you like it?’

‘I adored it.’

‘Roddy, are we flirting?’

‘Are we?’

‘If we are, it’s your fault. You make me feel sort of stimulated. I didn’t flirt with Martin.’

‘I’m very glad to hear it. Martin wouldn’t have liked it at all.’

They laughed and danced on. He held her very close, the cold rim of his ear touching her forehead.

‘To think I’ve never danced before!’

‘Why haven’t you?’

‘Nobody to dance with.’

‘Nobody?’

‘Nobody at all.’

‘Have you been living on your little lone since I went away?’

‘Ever since then.’

‘Well, now I’ve come back we’ll dance a lot, won’t we?’

‘Oh yes. But you’ll disappear again, I know you will.’

‘Not yet. And not for long.’

She could have cried, he was so comforting.

He spun, holding her tightly, stopped, held her a moment more, and let her go as the record came to an end. She watched him as he went, with that secret of idle grace in his movements, to switch off the gramophone. He looked pale and composed as ever, while she was flushed, throbbing and exhausted with excitement. She stood at the open French windows and leaned towards the cool night air; and he found her silent when he came back.

‘A penny for them, Judith.’

‘I was thinking--what extraordinary things one says. I suppose it’s the dancing. It seems so incredibly easy to behave as one naturally wouldn’t----’

‘I find that myself,’ he said solemnly.

‘The--the unsuitable things that generally stay inside one’s head,--they spring to one’s lips, don’t they?’

‘They do.’

‘Values are quite changed. Don’t you think so?’

She must make him realize that she was not really a cheap flirtatious creature: re-establish her dignity in his eyes. She had behaved so lightly he might be led to think of her and treat her without respect, and laugh at her behind her back after she had ceased to divert him. It was very worrying.

‘Quite, quite changed,’ he said.

‘Isn’t it queer? I suppose--it doesn’t do much harm? One oughtn’t to think worse of a person for----’

He threw back his head to laugh at his ease, silently, as always, as if his joke were too deep down and individual for audible laughter.

‘Are you laughing at me, Roddy?’

‘I can’t help it. You’re so terribly funny. You’re the funniest person I’ve ever met.’

‘Why am I?’

‘You’re so incredibly serious.’

‘I’m not--not always.’

‘I’m afraid you are. I’m afraid you’re terribly introspective.’

‘Am I? Is that wrong? Roddy, please don’t laugh at me. It leaves me out if you laugh by yourself like that. I could laugh _with_ you at any thing, if you’d let me----’ she pleaded.

‘Anything--even yourself?’

She pondered.

‘I don’t know. Perhaps not. That’s a weakness, isn’t it?’

‘There you go again! Never mind about your weaknesses. I was only teasing you. Let me see you smile.’

To obey him her lips went upwards sorrowfully; but when she saw his laughing, coaxing face, her heart had to lift too.

‘Well you’re very nice anyway,’ he said, ‘serious or no. Have you forgiven me?’

‘Oh yes. Yes, Roddy.’

As she said it she realised with a passing prophetic sense of helplessness and joy and fear that whatever he did she would always inevitably forgive him. But she must not tell him that, yet.

Martin and Mariella came strolling back from the garden, the spark of their cigarettes going before them. She heard Mariella’s little laugh bubbling out contentedly, her childish voice answering his in an easy chatter. Yes, Mariella was happy with Martin. He was polite and kind to her, and she was equal to him without effort. As she came into the light Judith was struck afresh by the lack of all emphasis, the careful absence of any one memorable feature in the memorable whole of her beauty. Her lovely athletic body effaced itself in simple clothes of no particular fashion or cut; subdued in colour, moderately long, moderately low in their necks and short in their sleeves,--negative clothes that nevertheless were distinguished, and said “Mariella” and nothing else in the world.

It was time to go.

‘Oh, must you?’ said Mariella.

Roddy said not a word. He had detached himself as soon as the others came in, and was idly busy in a corner, tuning a guitar. Either he had not heard or was not interested. It seemed impossible that his face had been off its guard a few minutes ago, warming and lighting in swift response.

Julian lounged in again silently, a book in his hand. He looked tired and fierce, as if daring her to remember his recent lapse into friendliness. The strange disheartening people....

She stammered: ‘Well, good-night everybody. Thank you so much.’

‘One of the boys will see you home,’ said Mariella dubiously.

‘Oh no. It isn’t necessary. I’ll just climb over the wall if the gate’s locked. I shall be quite all right, honestly....’

There was no need to protest. They dismissed the matter in silence.

‘Well, come in any time,’ said Mariella.

But any time was no good. She had dreaded just such a non-committal invitation. Any time probably meant never. Despondently she looked back to smile her thanks; and as her eyes took in the group of them standing there looking at her, she felt suddenly startled.

But they were all alike!

So strange, so diverse in feature and colour, they yet had grown up with this overpowering likeness; as if one mind had thought them all out and set upon them, in spite of variations, the unmistakable stamp of itself. Alone among all the tall distinguished creatures Roddy made sharp departure, and preserved, though not wholly intact, the profounder individuality of his unimportant features.

4

It was some weeks later. The day had been long and fruitless. She had idled through the hours, playing the piano, reading ‘_Pecheurs d’Islande_’ with voluptuous sorrow, doing nothing. A letter from her mother in Paris had arrived in the afternoon. They were not coming home just yet. Father had caught another of his colds and seemed so exhausted by it. He was in bed and she was nursing him, and it had meant cancelling his party, that party. Why should not Judith come out and join them, now that her examinations were over? It would amuse her; and Father would be glad to have her. They would expect her in a few days; she was old enough now to make the journey by herself.

Her heart was heavy. She could not leave the house, the spring garden, this delicious solitude, these torturing and exquisite hopes. How could she drag herself to Paris when she dared not even venture beyond the garden for fear of missing them if they came for her? If she went now, the great opportunity would be gone irrevocably; they would slip from her again just as life was beginning to tremble on the verge of revelation. She must devise an excuse; but it was difficult. She swallowed a few mouthfuls of supper and wandered back into the library.

The last of the sun lay in the great room like blond water, lightly clouded, still, mysterious. The brown and gold and red ranks of the dear books shone mellow through it, all round the room from the floor three quarters way to the ceiling; the Persian rugs, the Greek bronzes on the mantlepiece, the bronze lamps with their red shades, the tapestry curtains, the heavy oak chairs and tables, all the dim richnesses, were lit and caressed by it into a single harmony. The portrait of her father as a dark-eyed, dark-browed young man of romantic beauty was above the level of the sun, staring sombrely down at his possessions. She could sit in this room, especially now with hair brushed smooth and coiled low across the nape, defining the lines of head and neck and the clear curve of the jaw,--she could sit alone here in her wine-red frock and feel part of the room in darkness and richness and simplicity of line; decorating it so naturally that, if he saw, his uncommunicating eyes would surely dwell and approve.

She and the young man of the portrait recognised each other as of the same blood, springing with kindred thoughts and dreams from a common root of being, and with the same physical likeness at the source of their unlikeness which she had noticed in the cousins next-door. She was knit by a heart-pulling bond to the portrait; through it, she knew she loved the elderly man whose silent, occasional presence embarrassed her.

There was sadness in everything,--in the room, in the ringing bird-calls from the garden, in the lit, golden lawn beyond the window, with its single miraculous cherry-tree breaking in immaculate blossom and tossing long foamy sprays against the sky. She was sad to the verge of tears, and yet the sorrow was rich,--a suffocating joy.

The evening held Roddy clasped within its beauty and mystery: he was identified with its secret.

‘Oh, Roddy, I love you! I’ve always loved you.’

Oh, the torment of loving!

But soon the way would open without check and lead to the happy ending. Surely it had started to open already.

The pictures came before her.

Roddy playing tennis,--playing a characteristic twisty game that irritated his opponents, and made him laugh to himself as he ran and leapt. His eyes forgot to guard themselves and be secret: they were clear yellow-brown jewels. She was his partner, and with solemn fervour she had tried to play as she had never played before, for his sake, to win his admiration. But he was not the sort of partner who said: “Well played!” or “Hard lines.” He watched her strokes and looked amused, but was silent even when she earned him victory after victory.

Afterwards she said:

‘Oh, Roddy, I love tennis. Don’t you?’

He answered indifferently:

‘Sometimes,--when they let me do as I like; when I’m not expected to play what they call properly. One of my lady opponents once told me I played a most unsporting game. “My intelligence, however corrupt, is worth all your muscle”--was what I did not just then think of saying to her. She was in a temper, that lady.’

She smiled at him, thinking how she loved the feel of her own body moving obediently, the satisfaction of achieving a perfect stroke, the look of young bodies in play and in repose,--especially his; and she hazarded:

‘I love it just for the movement. I love movement,--the look of people in motion and the thought and feel of my own movements. I suppose I am too solemn over it. I want so much to do it as well as I can. I’m solemn because I’m excited. I sometimes think I would like above all things to be the best dancer in the world,--or the best acrobat; or failing that, to watch dancers and acrobats for ever.’

Looking back on their few but significant conversations, she decided that there was something about him which invited confidences while seeming to repel them. Though his response--if it came at all or came save in silent laughter--was uncoloured by enthusiasm and unsweetened by sympathy, he made her feel that he understood and even pondered in secret over her remarks.

‘There are some things I tell you, Roddy, that I tell no one else. They make themselves be told. Often I haven’t known they were inside me.’ She rehearsed this silently. One day she would say it aloud to him.

Then she had added:

‘Do you still caricature, Roddy?’

‘Now and then,--when I feel like it.’

‘It is funny how a caricature impresses a likeness on you far quicker and more lastingly than a good portrait. Do you remember you once did one of me when we were little and I cried?’

‘I’d forgotten that.’

‘Do you see everybody with their imperfections exaggerated--always?’

‘Only with one eye. That’s my defence. The other has so frequently to be shut--or wounded. But there’s a great deal of æsthetic pleasure to be had from the contemplation of monsters.’

‘I suppose the temptation is to shut the normal one more and more until finally it ceases to work; especially if the other one has a greater facility. And it has, hasn’t it, Roddy?’

‘Perhaps. You must stay by me and counteract it.’

‘Which is it?’ she looked at him laughing.

He shut one eye.

‘I shut it entirely to look at you,’ he said.

Afterwards when she played again, a single with Martin, he lay on the bank, indolent after his burst of energy, watching her long after the others had lost interest and gone indoors. Passing him once, she had closed one eye and looked at him inquiringly; and all his face had broken up in warm delighted twinklings. He did welcome the most trivial jokes from her; and they were always trivial, and not nearly frequent enough.

Next time had been the time of Julian’s extremely bad temper. He had played tennis with malice and vicious cuts and nasty exclamations of triumph. Over Roddy’s face slid down the mask of deadly obstinacy which was his anger.

He came from the game and flung himself on the bank without a word, while Julian remained on the court, peevishly patting balls about.

‘He annoys me,’ said Roddy after a bit, watching him under heavy lids. Presently he took a piece of paper from his pocket and worked in silence.

‘Roddy, may I see it?’

He made no reply; but after a few more minutes he flung it over to her.

It was a terrible success (Julian had always been the most successful subject); and it was devilish as well as funny.

‘Oh, Roddy!’ She began to giggle.

‘Sh! Lookout! He’s coming back.’

He snatched the paper from her and crushed it up.

‘Oh, let me keep it.’

‘Well, don’t let him see it. He hates it.’

He flung it hurriedly into her lap as Julian came up; and as she stuffed it into her pocket with studied carelessness, his lips suddenly relinquished the last of his obstinacy, and he flashed her a look suffused with laughter and the sense of shared guilt. Surely he had never looked at anyone before with such irresistible intimacy and appeal. The less assured face of the child Roddy peered for a moment in that look; but the dark and laughing fascination was new and belonged to the young man; and she melted inwardly at the remembrance of it.

Then there had been the time Martin and Roddy had come to tea--so exciting a little time that she still dwelt on it with beating heart.

She felt again her delighted astonishment at sight of the pair of them coming up the garden. She had washed her hair and was drying it in the sun when they appeared; it was spread in a mass round her shoulders and down to her waist, and she was brushing the last of the damp out of it.

‘Hullo!’ said Martin.

‘Hullo!’

They came smiling up to her.

‘Are you busy?’ said Martin.

‘No, only washing my hair. Please excuse it.’

‘We like it,’ said Roddy. He watched her brushing, combing it and shaking it back over her shoulders as if fascinated.

‘Are you doing anything this afternoon?’ said Martin.

‘Oh no!’--eagerly.

‘Shall we be in the way?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then may we come to tea?’

‘Oh! Will you really?’

‘Julian has got some tiresome people we don’t like, so we escaped, and Roddy suggested coming to find you.’

Roddy raised his eyebrows, smiling faintly.

‘Well, we both suggested it,’ continued Martin with a blush. ‘May we really stay?’

Which, oh, which of them had suggested it?...

‘Will you wait here while I go and put my hair right?’

‘It’s not dry yet,’ said Roddy. ‘Let me brush it at the back for you.’

She stood still in embarrassed pleasure while he brushed and combed her hair.

‘You do it beautifully. You don’t pull a bit.’

‘I’m a good hairdresser. I brush my mother’s when her maid’s out.’

‘Has she got lovely hair?’

‘Goodish. Very long. Not such lumps of it as this though.’ He took up a handful and weighed it. ‘Extraordinary stuff.’

It was the first time that she had ever heard him mention his mother. Why, Roddy must have a home life, a whole background of influences and associations of which she knew nothing.... She felt startled and anxious; and the old ache at being left out, failing to possess, stirred in her.

She saw him brushing his mother’s hair with careful hands. His mother had long dark hair perfumed deliciously. She had a pale society face, and she sat before her brilliantly lit dressing table wearing a rich wrap and pearls, and put red on her lips, and made Roddy fetch and carry for her about the bedroom. They talked and laughed together. She had never heard of Judith.

Judith dismissed the picture.

Roddy went on brushing, while Martin stared and smiled at her. They made a most intimate-looking little group. She thought of herself for a moment as their sister. Roddy would often brush her hair for her if she was his sister, or if....

‘There!’ said Roddy. ‘_Je vous félicite, Mademoiselle._’ He adjusted her tortoiseshell slide and bowed to her with the hairbrush over his heart.

‘I love your garden,’ said Martin.

She showed them the garden and then the house. They asked questions and admired the furniture and the rare books she picked out for them in the library.

‘When Daddy comes back you must meet him,’ she said. ‘He’d love to show you his books.’

She was sure he would like such appreciative young men.

‘I’d like to meet him awfully,’ said Martin. ‘I’ve often heard about him.’

She glowed.

‘No wonder you’re a bookworm, Judy,’ said Roddy, searching the shelves with absorbed eyes. ‘I’d be myself if I had this always round me.’

He could hardly tear himself away from browsing and gazing.

In the hall hung a water-color portrait of Judith at the age of six.

‘Ah!’ said Roddy. ‘I remember you like this.’

He looked from her to the portrait, and then at her again, as if remembering and comparing, and dwelling on the face she smilingly lifted to him until she had to drop her eyes.

They had tea in the drawing-room,--exquisite China tea in the precious Nankin cups which always appeared for visitors. Everything in the house was precious and exquisite: she had never realized it before; and she thought:

‘Now that they have seen me in my beautiful home, against my own background, the only daughter of such richness, they will think more of me.’

It certainly seemed so. Conversation flowed happily about nothing. She was, for the first time, completely at her ease; and they listened with interest,--even with a sort of deference, as if they thought her rather a special person.

After tea they went down to the river. The westering sun spread on the water as far as eye could see in a full embrace of shining light.

‘Let’s bathe,’ said Martin.

They ran next door for their bathing suits while she undressed in the boathouse. Then they returned and undressed behind the boathouse; and they all plunged into the water together.

Judith and Roddy stood on the raft, watching Martin diving sideways, and backwards and forwards, always perfectly, his magnificent muscle swelling and rippling as he moved. He swam and dived with a faultless ease of technique, as if he could never tire.

But Roddy would not exert himself. After two swift arrow-like dives he stood on the raft looking funny and boyish, with his hair plastered close over his head and his too-slender body shivering slightly. She noticed how delicately he was made in spite of his height. He had the look of a cat, graceful, narrow and lazy; and his skin was almost as smooth as her own.

When she dived he watched her body and all her movements closely; and she wondered whether his artist’s eye were detecting the faults and virtues of her form and if she compared at all favorably with his models in Paris.

She swam a little and talked to Martin, and came back to the raft.

‘Have you had enough, Roddy?’

‘Soon.’

‘Do you prefer watching?’

‘I always prefer watching.’

It was true. He would watch with deep concentration while others moved and took exercise, as if he were drawing them in his mind or getting them by heart; but his own impulses towards physical activity were rare and of brief duration.

‘I like swimming,’ said Judith; careful not to say she adored it.

‘You do it very nicely.’

‘But this is dull compared with swimming at night.’

‘Ah!’

‘Have you ever done that?’

‘No, never.’

‘You don’t need to wear a bathing-suit then. It’s far more delicious with nothing on.’

‘I suppose it is.’

‘I do it quite often.’

Now she was going to tell him something she had never meant to tell him. She could not stop herself. As if he were expecting it, he turned his face to hers, and waited.

‘I saw you once when I was bathing. It was before we met again. You were in a canoe, alone, and I knew it was you. I watched you go past.’

‘I know you did.’

‘You----?’

‘I saw you,’ he said.

She was paralysed; and of the questions which flooded her mind not one could be spoken.

She lifted her eyes and saw his weighing on her, making her answer him, with something heavy and fixed, dazed almost, at the back of their clear shining. She gazed back; and in a moment was lost, sinking in timeless soundless darkness and clinging to his eyes while she drowned.

It was all over in the duration of two or three heavy heart beats: and then they were standing together aimlessly, shivering in wet bathing-suits and Martin came all streaming and fresh from the water and broke in upon them with cheerful upbraidings.

They parted from her with happy thanks and friendly looks, and Roddy said that some day he would come and spend a whole afternoon in the library if he might; and then instead of the casual: ‘See you again soon’ which she dreaded, they gave her a specific invitation to a picnic in two days’ time.

That had been the last time.

It was a day without sun. The muffled light fell all day across the countryside as if through faintly shining bluish glass; and beneath it the spring held itself withdrawn and still, as unchanging as a picture. Around the gentle green of the picnic meadow was the wild and ardent green of the little hedge; and here and there across the hedge, the blackthorn flung great scatters of frail-spun snow. Beyond the meadow the larch copse was lit all over with plumes of green fire; and upon its fringes, pure against the dim purple-brown of its tangled trunks, a stripling tree or so sprinkled its fresh leaves out upon the darkness like a swarm of green moths arrested in flight. Everywhere was the lavish, pouring green, smouldering and weighed-down with the ache of life, and quiet, quiet, turned inward upon itself and consuming its own heart. Everywhere the white blossom, as it rose, freed itself lightly from its roots in earth’s pangs of passion and contemplation, and, floating upon the air, kept but one secret, which was beauty, paid no heed, gave no sign.

Roddy lay with his head in the moss, sniffing at primroses, nibbling grasses, teasing Martin under his breath, watching them all with half-closed eyes.

Everyone was quiet and happy; all the peevishness was gone, all the tension smoothed out. The cigarette smoke curled in patterns into the still air; and now and again the Spring stirred, shook out a long breath of blossom and leaf and wet earth; and then was tranced again.

They made a wood fire and watched it sink to crumbling feathery ash round a glowing core; and they ate oranges and tomatoes and very young small lettuces stolen from the garden by Martin who was still, so Roddy said, a tiger for raw vegetables. But there were no onions: he declared he had given them up.

Nothing memorable was said or done, yet all seemed significant, and her happiness grew to such a poignant ecstasy that her lips trembled. She rolled over and hid her face in her hands for fear it should betray her by indecent radiance; but nobody noticed. Their eyes looked calm and dreaming: even Mariella’s had a less blind stare, a depth of meditation.

If only the moment could stay fixed, if their strange and thoughtful faces could enclose her safely for ever in their trance of contentment, if she could be able to want nothing from them beyond a share of their unimpassioned peace: if only these things could be, they would be best. For a moment they seemed possible; for a moment she achieved a summit and clung briefly to it, tasting the cool taste of no desire. But it would not do: it was the taste of being old and past wanting people,--past wanting Roddy who already tasted so sharply and sweetly that she must have more of him and more of him; and whose presence in the circle made collective indifference a pretence too bleak to strive for.

The sun flooded the meadow all at once in a tide of pallid light; and the earth ceased to struggle and brood in the dark coil of itself, and spread itself smiling and released. The spell within the clouded crystal of the afternoon broke; they stretched and stirred. Judith looked up at the big elm.

‘Who can climb this?’ she said.

‘Up with you,’ said Martin.

She climbed as she had not climbed since childhood, lifting herself lightly, unhesitatingly from branch to branch. At the top she looked down and saw them all small beneath her, looking up. Boldly from her eminence she called to the little creatures to come up; but not one of them would.

She descended again, feeling young and silly in the face of their lack of physical ambition. But they were all smiling upwards to receive her. Martin held his hands up to her and she took them and jumped from the bottom bough.

‘You haven’t forgotten your stuff,’ he said, and his eyes dwelt on her with their faithful brown look.

‘I wish I could do that,’ said Mariella. ‘I never could.’

‘And now,’ said Julian, ‘divert us with a hand spring or so,’--and his harsh face looked half-amused, half-clouded with an odd look,--almost like jealousy.

He had never been really pleased with the spectacle of other people’s successes: He found it too bitter not to be himself the one to excel. But he could not trouble her to-day or make her doubtful.

Roddy said nothing,--only looked at her out of glinting, twinkling eyes.

It was time to go home.

She parted from them gaily, taking her immense happiness with her unbroken, for once stepping clear out of the day into sleep with it wrapped round her.

But now, when she looked back for that day, it was a million miles behind her, floating unsubstantially like a wisp of shining mist: and all that returned to her out of it, clear and whole, were two detached impressions which, at the time, had barely brushed her consciousness: the look of young lilac-leaves with the sun on them, glittering above the garden-gate where she had bidden them good-bye; and the expression she had surprised on Mariella’s face some time in that day,--but when, she had forgotten.

Whatever had disturbed Mariella’s face then, it had not been happiness. The other faces, even Roddy’s, had unaccountably become blurred in the mist; but Mariella’s came back again and again, as if to stress the significance of its momentary defencelessness; as if, could it only be solved, there, in a flash, would be the whole clue to Mariella.

* * * * *

She got up and studied her hair in the mirror above the mantelpiece. While she stared there came a tap on the window behind her. She turned and there was Roddy peering through the pane and laughing at her. She ran to the window and opened it.

‘Roddy!’

It did not seem possible that he should have come when she wanted him so badly.

‘I’ve knocked twice. You were too busy to hear me.’

‘I’ve put my hair up.’

‘It’s ravishing. Will you please come in it to a fireworks party which Martin is giving in about an hour’s time?’

‘Fireworks! of all heavenly things! Hurrah for Martin!’

‘He only thought of it this afternoon, and he dashed into the town and bought up the whole stock. He sent me to fetch you. He says he must have you. Julian’s terrified of the big rocket and he wants you to persuade him to light it. And you’re to stay to supper afterwards. Mariella’s away for the night. Can you face it?’

‘Oh, how glorious!’

He gave her a hand and she jumped out of the window.

Roddy was in his best mood. He was friendly and talkative; his face was almost wide awake; his very hair looked alert, ruffled about his forehead; and he was sunburnt and clear-eyed, at his ease in grey flannels and yellow shirt and an ancient navy-blue coat.

The river had an enchanted beauty and stillness in the half-light. It was moon-coloured, with a dying flush in it; faint opal flickers lit the ripples that broke away on either side of the canoe.

‘It won’t be dark enough for a while, yet,’ said Roddy.

‘They’ll wonder where I am.’

‘Why? Didn’t you tell them?’

‘They didn’t know I’d slip off so soon.’

She blushed. It really looked as if Roddy had come early in order to have a little time alone with her. He would not say so; but he twinkled and smiled so gaily that she smiled back at him, as if giving him secret for delightful secret.

‘They’ll tease me,’ he declared.

‘No. Will they?’

‘Yes, I assure you----’

‘How silly!’

‘Isn’t it? Do you know, they’ll suspect us of the most desperate flirtation on this exquisite secluded river.’

‘_Will_ they?’ She was troubled.

‘What common minds! As if a man couldn’t be alone with a girl without making love to her.’

‘Oh, I do agree, Roddy.’

He threw back his head and laughed silently: he had been laughing all the time. And it had seemed for a moment that Roddy was prepared for the first time in her memory to have a little serious conversation.

‘Oh, Roddy, how you do laugh at me!’

‘I can’t help it, Judy. You are so incredibly solemn. You don’t mind, do you? Please don’t mind. I adore people who make me laugh.’

It was that his laughter left her out, making her feel heavy and unhumorous. If only he would teach her to play with him, how quick and apt he would find her!

‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘Only I do wish I could be ready for you.’

Being himself, was Roddy more likely or less likely to fall in love with a person he never took seriously?

‘You’d forgive anybody, however badly they treated you, wouldn’t you, Judy?’

‘Forgiving or not forgiving doesn’t mean much to me. I never could feel wronged. I might not be able to help feeling hurt, but _forgiveness_ wouldn’t come into it.’

‘Hmm!’ said Roddy. ‘Are you sure you’re so civilized? Personally I never forgive anybody anything. I’m like God. I love my grievances, and want people to feel them.’

‘I know you’re laughing really. I know it isn’t true, what you say.’

He said quickly, quite seriously:

‘I never would forgive a person who made a fool of me.’

‘I wouldn’t _like_ it; but if it only affected myself, it wouldn’t be important. A thing that happens to yourself alone doesn’t _matter_.’ She stopped and blushed painfully, thinking: ‘How he’ll mock.’ But instead he looked at her gravely and nodded, saying:

‘I dare say you’re right.’

It was beginning to get dark.

He steered the canoe under the willows into narrow shadinesses, lit a cigarette and lay back watching her.

‘And what will they teach you at college, Judy?’

No one but he knew how to say ‘Judy.’

‘I don’t know, Roddy. I’m rather frightened,--not about the reading,--about the girls, all the people. I don’t understand a bit how to live with lots of people. I never have. I shall make such mistakes. It oppresses me, such a weight of lives crammed together in one building, such a terrifying press of faces. I prefer living alone.’

‘Don’t get standardized, or I shan’t come and visit you.’

‘Will you come and visit me?’

‘If I ever find myself not too desperately busy,’ he said twinkling.

‘I shall look forward to that. Perhaps I’ll see Martin sometimes too. Perhaps it won’t be so bad.... Roddy, do you realize I’ve never known anyone of my own age except the gardener’s little girl and one or two local children--and all of you? After you left, when we were little, I was so lonely I.... You don’t know. Daddy would never let me be sent to school. Now you’re back, I expect every day to wake up and find you all vanished again.’

‘We shan’t vanish again.’

‘If only I were sure!’

‘I’m sure.’

‘Oh, you! You’re the most vanishing of all. You slip through my fingers.’

‘Not I. It’s you who do that.’

‘I?’

‘Yes. You elude....’ He made a gesture with his hand. ‘I don’t understand how you work. You’re an enigma. You intrigue me.’

‘I’m very glad.’

‘And I’m afraid of you.’

‘You’re not. You’re only amused at me.’

‘No. You’re wrong.’

He fell silent, smoking and watching her; all his attention fixed in his eyes. It was as if he could not look away. Her head swam, and she stammered:

‘What are you thinking?’

‘That it’s a good thing we--agree so--completely about the standards of conduct proper between the sexes; otherwise it might be a good thing you’re so exceptionally forgiving.’ His voice had an edge of question.

‘Roddy, what are you talking about?’

‘Nothing. A slight emotional conflict,--now resolved.’

He sat up suddenly, brushing some mood all in a minute from his mind and his eyes and his voice. He lit another cigarette and started paddling.

Supposing Roddy had been going to say: ‘Kiss me?’ ... Better not to think about it.

The stars were bright now: it must be dark enough for Martin’s fireworks. Things were happening next-door: Martin was preparing to celebrate in earnest. He had hung a row of fairy lanterns all along the eaves of the verandah, and the lights glowed rose, blue, green and white among the leaves of the vine. His shadowy figure was moving on the lawn, and another moved beside it: that was Tony Baring, Roddy explained, his friend and Martin’s, staying for the night. Julian was playing the piano; he was visible in profile against the window.

‘What a party, Roddy! And I the only lady. Please protect me.’

‘Oh yes, we all will. We’ll each protect you against all the others, so you’re fairly safe.’

A sudden light flared up in the garden.

‘Hey!’ said Martin’s voice. ‘Hi! Here everybody! My fireworks have started. Where the hell has Roddy got to? I wanted----’

‘Here we are!’ shouted Judith. ‘Hullo, Martin! Martin! We’re here, we’re watching. Hurrah for you, Martin!’

‘Oh good! Is that you, Judy? I’ve got some pretty hot stuff here. Watch!’

He spoke in the anxious excited voice of a small boy displaying the charms of his hobby to some indulgently attentive adult.

‘Oh, Martin, that’s splendid. Oooh, what a beauty! How I adore fireworks!’

It was essential that dear Martin should be made to feel his fireworks a success. They had behind them so eager a purpose of giving amusement to others that they deserved tremendous encouragement. You felt he had spent every penny of his pocket-money on them.

There was a shout of laughter and screams from Julian. He had left the piano and was joining the others on the lawn; and the Catherine wheel had broken loose and was after him, snapping and leaping at his heels.

A shower of golden sparks went up in a fountain and poured down over the tulips and wall-flowers. Another followed; but this time the shower was rainbow-coloured. The deep talk and laughter of Martin, Julian and Tony was a strange not quite human chorus in the moonless dark.

‘Oh, Roddy, isn’t it exciting?’

‘It is indeed.’

The fireworks became more and more splendid. Long crystal-white cascades broke and streamed down to the grass. Things went off in the air with a soft delicious explosion and blossomed in great blazing coloured drops that lingered downwards like a drift of slow petals.

‘Oh, Roddy, if only----! They’re so brief. I wish they were never quenched but went on falling and falling, so lovely for ever. Would you be content to burst into life and be a ten seconds’ marvel and then vanish?’

But Roddy only smiled. On his face was the mask behind which he guarded his personal pleasures and savoured them in secret.

Suddenly the willow-trees were revealed cloudily in a crude red light,--then an aching green one,--then one like the concentrated essence of a hundred moonlights. The three men on the lawn were outlined in its glare, motionless, with their heads up. She heard Martin cursing. Something was a complete failure: it spat twice, threw a thin spark or so and went out. Then the big rocket took wings with a swift warning hiss, left in its wake a thick firefly trail and broke at a great height with a velvety choke of fulfilment and relief, bloomed rapidly in perfect symmetry, a huge inverted gold lily,--then started dropping slowly, flower unfurling wide from the heart of coloured flower all the way down.

‘Roddy, look at that! Honestly, you feel anything so lovely must be made by enchantment and thrown into the air with no cause behind it except the--the stress of its own beauty. I can’t connect it with Bryant and May, can you?’

Then all was gone. There was a splash. A swan drifting near the canoe shook itself and swirled sharply, with puffed wings, into the shadows. Roddy picked a charred stick out of the water and held it up.

‘Signs and wonders!’ he said. ‘The swan had a revelation too. Here’s a remedy against fancy, Judy. Wouldn’t you like to keep it?’

‘Throw it away at once.’

He flipped it over his shoulder laughing.

The fireworks were over, and the three men were coming down towards the water’s edge.

Roddy whispered:

‘Shall we escape?’

‘Oh....’

It was too late.

‘Hullo! Hullo!’ called the cheerful voice of Martin. ‘Did you enjoy my fireworks?’

All at once there was much laughter and talk and greeting, and she was drawn out of their exquisite aloofness into the voluble every-day circle. Martin stretched an eager hand and out she stepped from the canoe among them all. Half-dazed, she saw shadows of men standing round, appearing and fading as in a dream, felt dream-like touches of men’s hands; heard unreal voices bidding good-evening to Judith; was conscious of dim confusion of movement towards the house. Did her own face rise so wanly against the darkness, deep-shadowed under the features, a firm-cut austere mask? Beneath the masks the hidden eyes held now and then a straying gleam from the fairy-lanterns. It was all so nearly a sleeper’s dream that to speak audibly seemed a vast effort.

Roddy strolled up from the river’s edge, having made fast the boat. He came close and stood behind her shoulder, just touching it; and at once the dream broke and every pulse was alert.

They went into the house for supper.

Tomato-sandwiches and cake, fruit-salad and bananas and cream, lemonade and cider-cup loaded the table. Martin had prepared the whole thing himself with a passion of judicious greed.

Tony Baring sat opposite and stared with liquid expressive blue eyes. He had a sensitive face, changing all the time, a wide mouth with beautiful sensuous lips, thick black hair and a broad white forehead with the eyebrows meeting above the nose, strongly marked and mobile. When he spoke he moved them, singly or together. His voice was soft and precious, and he had a slight lisp. He looked like a young poet. Suddenly she noticed his hands,--thin unmasculine hands,--queer hands--making nervous appealing ineffectual gestures that contradicted the nobility of his head. She heard him call Roddy ‘my dear’; and once ‘darling’; and had a passing shock.

There was a submerged excitement in the room. Mariella’s absence had noticeable effect: there was a lightness of wit, an ebullience of talk and laughter; gay quick voices answering each other.

The polished table was blotted over with pools of red candleshade, and pale pools from the white tulips picked in honour of the guest. The great mirror opposite reflected the table with all its muted colours; reflected too the back of Tony’s broad head and a bit of Roddy in curious profile, and her own face, lustrous-eyed, dark-lipped, long of neck and mysterious. When she looked at it she thought it was transfigured; and she knew who made the electric feeling.

It was time to go home.

But Roddy got up and started the gramophone; then caught her by the hand and led her out on the verandah.

‘One dance,’ he said.

‘And then I must go.’

‘You dance better than ever to-night.’

‘It’s because I’m so enjoying myself.’

He laughed and tightened his arm round her.

‘Judy----’

‘Yes? Oh, Roddy, I do love it when you say “Judy.” Nobody else says it like you.’

He bent his face to look into her lifted one with a soft hidden smile.

‘What were you going to say?’ she asked.

‘I forget. When you look at me with your enormous eyes I forget everything I mean to say.’

The gramophone stopped abruptly, with a hideous snarl; and the form of Julian darted forth like a serpent upon them.

‘You’ve waked the boy with that damned noise,’ he said. ‘I knew you would.’

He was gone; and in the succeeding shock of quiet the wail of Peter floated down to them. Quick footsteps sounded in the room above; and suddenly there was silence.

‘Oh, Roddy, he was cross.’

‘Yes,’ said Roddy indifferently. ‘He’s fussier than twenty old Nannies. The brat’s nurse has gone to see her sister buried, so he’s looking after him.’

‘It’s funny how Julian seems to take charge of him, rather than Mariella.’

‘Oh, Julian’s always got to know best. I expect he told her she couldn’t be trusted with him. I believe they had words,--I don’t know. Anyway she went off to London this afternoon to a dog show or something, and left Julian triumphant.’ Roddy chuckled. ‘God, he’s a peculiar man.’

‘I never can believe that baby belongs to Mariella--and Charlie.’

But he gave her no response to that; although, as she spoke the name, with stars, lights, voices, music, his shadowed face, all that was lovely life around her, the pathos of that death struck her so wildly it seemed he must feel it too and draw closer to her.

How he watched her!

‘Roddy, what are you thinking about?’

She pleaded silently, suffocated with strange excitement: ‘Let us be frank. There’ll never be another night like this and soon we’ll be dead too. On such a night let us not miss one delight, let us speak the truth and not be afraid. Tell me you love me and I will tell you. You know it’s true to-night. Never mind to-morrow.’

But he shook his head slowly, smiling.

‘I never tell.’

She turned to go into the house.

‘Nor I. But I think one day I will,--tell somebody, one person, something--the truth, just once,--just to see how it feels.’

He followed her in silence into the house.

* * * * *

Martin and Tony were lying in arm-chairs, looking sleepy.

‘Poor things--longing to go to bed. It’s all right, I’m going now. I want to say good-night to Julian.’

On such a night Julian must not be left angry, alone. There must be no failure on her part at least.

‘He’s with Peter.’

‘In his old room?’

‘Yes.’

‘I know. I’ll be back in a minute.’

She ran up the stairs. Dimmed light streamed through a door ajar in front of her. It was the room where Julian and Charlie had slept years ago. Softly she pushed the door open.

Julian sat by the window with the child on his knees. He had thrown a shawl over his head and out of its folds the pale face peeped, owl-like and still. In his little night-suit he looked absurd and touching.

Julian raised a face so haggard and suffering that she paused, half-ashamed, uncertain what to say or do.

‘Come in, Judith,’ he said.

‘Only for a minute.... Won’t he sleep?’

‘No. I think he’s feverish. He got a fright, waking up alone. He’s very nervous.’

He bent over the child, rocking him, patting his shoulder.

‘I expect he’s just playing up. You ought to put him back in his cot.’

‘No. He’d cry. I couldn’t _endure_ it if he cried any more. I’ll keep him till he’s asleep.’

Solemn in his shawl, Peter bent his too-brilliant gaze upon her as she stooped to touch his cheek. He never smiled for her; but then neither did he greet her as he greeted most people with a clear: “Go ‘way.” He accepted her with grave politeness.

‘Do you like holding him?’

‘Yes,’ he said simply.

He was holding the child to comfort himself.

‘He’s very nice,’ she said. ‘What a different sort of childhood he’ll have from yours, with the others always round you! He’s likely to be the eldest of the next generation by a good deal, isn’t he?’

‘I should say so,’ he said bitterly. ‘I don’t mind betting not one of us provides a little cousin for him. I don’t see us breeding somehow. Unless possibly Martin....’

Not Roddy. No....

‘Well, you mustn’t let him be lonely.’

‘That’s her affair.’

‘Is it? She seems to let you take charge. Julian, does she love him?’

He was silent for a moment before answering: ‘I think she does.’ He put his hand to his head and said suddenly, very low: ‘O God, it’s awful! You know I quarreled with him--Charlie--over that marriage. I never saw him after it--we were never reconciled. But after the child was born, she wrote and told me he had said in his last letter to her that if anything happened to him he would like me to be the child’s guardian.... So I suppose he forgave me.’

‘Of course, of course, Julian,’ she said, half-weeping at the look of his bowed head.

Was this the canker that gnawed Julian,--interminable thought of Charlie dead like that, without a reconciling word?

‘I blame only myself,’ he said, still in the low voice. ‘_She_ has been very good. Never a word of--anything. Always that sweet empty unresentful way,--like a child. Sometimes I think she never knew--or never understood, anyway. I think she can’t understand that sort of thing. It’s a sort of insensitiveness. She might hate me over Peter, but she doesn’t seem to. Why doesn’t she?’

The expression she had surprised on Mariella’s face came back to her, still undecipherable.

‘I almost wish she would,’ he went on. ‘I wish I was certain she was jealous or even critical of me. I haven’t the least idea where I am.’ He rubbed his eyes and forehead wearily. ‘It’s odd how her presence affects me. She gets on my nerves to a degree! Nothing but this sweet blank passivity.... You know I like people with spikes and facets, people who thrust back when I thrust, brilliant, quick glittering people. And I like people who are slow and deep and warm; and I think you’re one of that sort, Judy. But what is she? Sometimes I think she’s watching me intently but I don’t know where from, and it makes me irritable. She’s got quality, you know,--incredible physical and moral courage. I think that must have been what Charlie loved in her. But cold, cold and flat--to me.’

He sighed and shivered.

‘Oh, Julian, you’re very tired, aren’t you? There’s nothing to worry about. You’ve got things on your mind because you’re so tired. Does your head ache?’

‘Yes. No.... I’m in a bad mood, Judith. You’d better leave me.’ But he spoke gently and raised his face to smile at her. It was then she saw that he had been crying.

‘I will leave you, Julian. I only came to say good-night. And to say I was sorry I made you angry. I wouldn’t have waked him for the world.’

‘It’s all right. I’m sorry I was angry. Don’t worry.’

‘Good-night, Julian.’

‘Good-night Judith.... You look so lovely----’

She thought: ‘I shall never see him like this again. I must remember....’

They looked at each other deeply, and when she turned silently away she had in imagination stooped and kissed his cheek.

As she opened the door, laughter and talk came suddenly to her from below,--a faint roar of male voices that struck her with strange alarm, and seemed to threaten her. She took a step back into the room again, listened and whispered:

‘Julian, who is that Tony?’

He shrugged.

‘I don’t know. He doesn’t talk to me. He writes verse I believe. He’s just bringing out a book. I gather from his conversation he is _quite_ the thing at Cambridge--in certain circles.’

‘Is Roddy very fond of him?’

‘Oh, Roddy! _Fond_ of him! I don’t know.’

‘He seems to be very fond of Roddy.’

‘Yes, it looks like it.’ He glanced at her sharply.

She knew then she had dreaded that he would answer in that way, give her just such a look. She remembered that Tony had been suddenly hostile; his eyes stony and watchful, had fastened on her when she came in from the verandah with Roddy.

The voices came up to her again, like a reiterated warning. ‘Keep away. You are not wanted here. We are all friends, men content together. We want no female to trouble us.’

Better not to go down among them all, safer to stay here in the quiet with Julian. She lingered, looking back in doubt and loneliness; but this time he did not tell her to stay. The muffled shining of the lamp filled the room, flowed over his form, his forehead bowed, drowsy and meditative, one great shoulder curving forward to support the white bundle lying against it. His pose suggested the something in him which it was hard to name,--a kind of beauty and nobility a little twisted. Close beside his narrow bed stood Peter’s cot, and Peter’s two plush animals lay upon the pillow.

Softly she closed the door upon that strange pair. If Mariella had seen them, would her face have changed?

Downstairs again.

It would not be Roddy who would offer to take her home. She saw in one glance that he had finished with her for to-night: he leaned against the mantelpiece, and Tony, beside him, had an arm about his shoulders; and Tony’s eyes, coldly upon her, said he was not for her. Something licked sickeningly at her heart: it was necessary to be jealous of the young poet Tony; for he was jealous of her. To her good-night Roddy replied with chilling mock-formal politeness, bowing his head, laughing at her. Martin put her cloak about her shoulders with reverent hands, and they went out.

The night was dark. All the blossoming things of earth were hidden, and the fragrances abroad seemed shaken from the stars that flowered and clustered profusely in the arching bows of the sky. They were back at her garden-gate. Above it rose a faint broken shadow where, by day, lilac and laburnum poured over in a wild maze to the lane. But when they came to the cherry-tree they found it still glimmering faintly,--a cloud, a ghost.

Judith stretched up a hand and picked a scrap of cherry and held it out to Martin.

‘That’s the secret of it all, I do think. Cherry blossom grows from the seeds of enchantment. Keep it and wish and you’ll have your heart’s desire. Wish, Martin.’

He snatched it and her hand with it. They waited. He held the spray and clutched her hand, sighed and said nothing. Their forms were shadows just outlined against the luminous tree.

‘What were you going to say?’ she whispered.

‘I--don’t know.’

‘No wishes?’

‘Too many.’

He was lost,--caught away, spell-bound, lost.

‘What a night! Isn’t it, Martin?’

‘It’s the very devil.’

‘I don’t feel a bit like myself, do you? There’s some sort of queerness about,--magic. Or is it just being young, do you think?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Don’t let’s ever be old. Could you bear it?’

‘I shouldn’t like it.’

‘Well wish that. Wish never to be old.’

Silence.

‘No,’ he said at last. He held her hand still and bent his head, twisting his bit of cherry. His voice came huskily: ‘I’ve wished something else.’

Gently she drew her hand away. She must run away quickly from whatever was happening: no emotional conflict with Martin must thrust across and confuse the path where all was prepared for one alone.

‘Don’t go in,’ implored Martin. ‘Can’t we walk?’

‘Oh, I must--I must go in.’

‘Oh, Judith!’

‘I must, Martin. Thank you for bringing me home, I must fly now. It’s so late----’ she said in panic.

‘When shall I see you again?’

‘Soon--soon.’

He was speechless. She called a soft good-night and left him and the darkness swallowed him up.

As she went towards the solitary light burning for her in the hall she thought with a sudden fear that he had implored her for assurance just as she mutely implored Roddy every time he left her; and she had answered--oh, not, surely not, as Roddy would have answered?

‘Oh, Roddy, come out of your dark maze and make me certain!’

She must warm herself with the remembrance of the first part of the evening, ignore the little chill of those few last minutes. What were his eyes telling her when he bade her good-night? Surely they were whispering: ‘Take no notice. We know what has passed between us, we know what must come. Though we must keep our secret before others, we do not deceive each other.’

Yes, that was it.

She started running; and wondered why; and ran as hard as she could.

As she opened the front door, she stopped, aghast. The telephone bell was screaming, screaming, screaming.

Telegram for Judith Earle. From Paris.

‘Father died this evening. Come to-morrow. Mother.’

As she hung up the receiver silence in a vast tide flowed in and drowned the house, his house, as if for ever.

He had been deep in the business of dying while she, his daughter---- No. She must not think that way; she must just think of him dead. What an extraordinary thing.... Last time she had seen him had he looked as if he were going to die? There came a doubtful indistinct picture of him--yes--going upstairs to bed, early, not later than ten o’clock. She had looked up the staircase and seen him near the top, mounting with a hand on the bannister: going to bed so early, looking--yes--a little feeble; the bowed back and slow yielding step, the slightly laborious stair-mounting of a man getting old--yes--a delicate elderly man, a little frightening, a little pathetic to see unexpectedly: for could youth then really depart? He had been young and he had come upon old age. Some day she too--she too ... yes, for a moment she had thought that. And now he was dead.

She crept to the library and switched on all the lights and stared at the portrait of a young man. That beautiful youth had lived, grown old and died. He had begotten a daughter who was looking at him and thinking these things. But the cold portraits of people held them bound for ever in unreality; they could not die: they had not lived.

She sank into a chair, burying her face in her hands, seeking for a memory that would make her know that he had lived and died.

She was very small and he, very kind and noble, was taking her to hear the child-genius play. Her excitement was too great to bear: she too would be a child-genius; and when the violin came it wrought on her so violently that she was sick where she sat. He had been deeply disappointed in her, his kindness and nobility turned to disgust.

At night, every night for a long time, with the night light burning, he had sat on her bed and sung softly to her. He sang ‘Uncle Tom Cobley.’

“_All along out along down along lea_....”

Oh, the haunting echo, the loneliness of that! Over and over he sang the names of the mysterious company of men, but so softly that the slipping syllables wove round her hazily and fled before she caught them.

Then he sang of a golden apple.

“_Evoe, evoe, wonderful way For subduing--subduing the hearts of men_....”

_Evoe, evoe_.... The sound started a pang, a question, a stir of rich sadness that went aching on, through the twice-sung whisper of the sibilants, right on after the fall, the lingering soft pause and fall of the last words.

At the end he sang “Good-night ladies.” When he had finished she said “Again”; and he sang it again and yet again, always more low, till finally it was nothing but a plaintive sigh. She lay listening with eyes shut, weeping with sorrow and delight.

“_Good-night, ladies, we’re going to leave you now_--”

That was so sad, so sad!

“_Merrily we’ll roll along, roll along, roll along, Merrily we’ll roll along on the deep--blue--sea._”

She saw a dim swaying far-stretching line of lovely ladies all in white, waving good-bye upon a dark sea-shore. The great ship faded away over the waves, bearing further and further the deep-throated chorus of singers. The long line swayed, reached vainly forward. Their white hands glimmered. She saw them fade, alas! fade, vanish out of sight.

Oh, he had known how to stir mystery in a child. He had turned sound inside out for her, making undreamed-of music,--and pictures besides, and light and colour. He had seemed to forget her for weeks at a time, but when he had remembered, what a more than compensating richness had come into life! She had planned to grow so beautiful and accomplished that he would be proud of her and want her with him always. They were to have travelled together, famous father and not unworthy daughter, and they were to have discussed very intellectual topics and she was to have looked after him when the steps, going upstairs, started, really started, to have that feebleness.... He was to have lived to be very old and go upstairs on her arm, cherished by her.

No more lessons in Greek: no more hearing him softly open his door to listen to her playing,--(though he never praised her, what praise that had been!) No more talk--now and then, when he remembered her, when his eyes dwelt on her with interest--of books and pictures and music and famous people he knew. No second proud visit to Cambridge with him, no seeing him sigh, smile, dream from an old don’s window over Trinity Great Court in the sun, after the lunch-party. The three elderly bachelors had smiled at her, embarrassed by her presence, doubtful as regards the attentions due to a young lady. They had been shy with her, courteous, careful and elegant of speech, a little dusty altogether, but gentle like their rooms, like the old gold light falling outside on ancient buildings. She had listened to them all savouring and playing with words, quoting Greek, saying “Do you remember?” He had seemed so distinguished, so brilliant, a man ripe and calm with knowledge. And afterwards he had shown her the colleges and the Backs and promised to come often to see her when she came up. He had talked of his youth and for a moment they had trembled on the verge of shared emotions: no more of that, no hope of future rich Cambridge occasions.

No more watching his intent and noble profile in the lamplight, stooped hour after hour over his writing, opposite the bust of Homer. Once or twice he had looked up and smiled at her as though vaguely content to have her with him. His desk was empty for ever. That was pathetic; it would bring tears if dwelt on; it made him so human.

Did it hurt to die?

Now in a flash she remembered the question:

‘Daddy, does it hurt to die?’

Years ago. Grandmamma had just died. When he came to say good-night to her in bed, she had asked him that.

He had remained silent and brooding. His silence filled her with terror: her heart beat and, red and panic-stricken, she stared at him. He was going to tell her something dreadful, he knew something so terrible about Grandmamma, about death and the way it hurt that he could not speak.... He was going to die.... _She_ was.... O God! O Jesus!

At last he had sighed and said:

‘No, no. It doesn’t hurt at all to die.’

She had flung herself weeping into his arms, and he had clasped her in silence; and from his quiet, pressing shoulder, comfort had poured in and in upon her.

It did not hurt at all to die, it was quite all right, he had said. He had just died.

She looked about her, at the brooding room. Nothing but loneliness, helplessness, appalling silence. She was cold too, shivering.

A little while ago she had been next door. Now the house would all be dark, shut to her. Supposing she were to run back to them with her tidings, surely they would help, advise, console: for they were her friends.

‘Roddy, Roddy, Daddy’s dead.’

He was standing with Tony’s arm around his shoulders, remote, indifferently smiling. He did not like grief, and Tony kept him from her. Her time was far away and long ago.

‘Julian, Daddy’s dead.’

He was bowed over the child; and he raised his head to listen, but made no answer. He had plenty of his own sorrows; and he feared she would wake the child.

But Martin might be told, Martin would listen and comfort with large and inarticulate tenderness. He would be standing under the cherry-tree, waiting, just as she had left him. She ran to the window.

There was nobody in the garden. A faint light was abroad,--it might be the small rising moon or the dawn--making the cherry-tree pale and clear. It seemed to float towards her, to swell and tower into the sky, a shining vision.

Then death, lovely death, lay at the heart of enchantment. It was the core of the mystery and beauty. To-morrow she would not know it, but to-night no knowledge was surer. And he whom they were to mourn was--in one minute she would know where he was,--one minute.

She leaned out of the window.

Now! Now!

But the cherry-tree was nothing but a small flowering cherry-tree. Before her straining eyes it had veiled itself and withheld the sign.