PART FIVE

1

It was the end of September. She had come home again, alone. Morning, noon and evening she sat about or wandered by herself, and watched the coloured procession of the days. Chill mornings wrapped in bluish mist broke softly towards mid-day, bloomed into shining pale yellow afternoons, died early, wistfully, in mists again, in grey dews shimmering upon the leaf-strewn lawn and the fallen apples, in motionless massed pomp of foliage burning softly beneath sunsets of muffled crimson, in moonrises strange with a bronze light.

The river lay stretched like a silken substance, with an oil-smooth sheen upon its dark olive surface; and all the poplars and willows upon the bank grew both ways--into the air, and down through the water with their long trunks shortened and their brightness tenderly blurred.

Next door, the shutters were up, and the copper beech dropped its leaves upon the deserted lawn.

In that deep-weighing, windless, mellow hush, alone in the house and garden, by the river, and on the hill, she saw all things begin to turn lingeringly, richly towards their end; and, at long last, felt in herself the first doubtful stir of new awakening.

Mamma had not come home. She was in Paris now, and was to remain there for the present.

She had been kind on that morning, when Judith had come to her bedside, told her that Julian had gone, that Martin was dead and that she herself was not feeling very well. She had asked not a single confidence, spoken no word of pity, but with merciful everydayness looked after her, revived her body with the practical comfort of brandy and hot-water bottles; and then, the next day, abandoned her cure and taken her away. They had motored all over France and into Italy and Switzerland; and Mamma, between long intervals of silence, had talked light sharp surface talk of the places and people they encountered, of food and clothes: talk that could be listened to with adequate attention and answered with ease. Through the close wrapping of lead upon her mind Judith had understood the deliberate and painstaking scheme of help, and been grateful for it. But when, after three weeks, Mamma started to make plans for an autumn together in Paris, Judith had suddenly asked to be allowed to go home. It was the first spontaneous impulse from a mind diseased, so it had seemed, beyond hope of revival. Sluggishly it stirred, but it remained: she must go home, be alone, find work, write a book, something.... Acquiescing, Mamma had not been able to conceal her relief. What a bore these weeks must have been for her!

Judith saw England once more with the senses of one waking before dawn exhausted from a nightmare, apprehending reality with shrinking and confusion, and then, gradually, with a faint inflowing of relief, of hope in the coming of the light.

Each morning she thought:

“To-day I will begin to write--start practicing again--apply through College for some post....”

But each evening found her still folded in the golden caressing solitudes of the garden, mindless and inert. There was no subject that could conceivably provide material for a book; no music that was not far too difficult to learn to play; no post that did not seem entirely distasteful.

Then, one afternoon, she paused by the grand piano, hesitated, opened it and sat down to play--Schumann, Chopin, Brahms, Debussy, Ravel ... a little of each, stumbling, giving up, going on again. At the end of two hours she stopped. At first her hands had not obeyed her; but after a time they had begun to remember, she had forced them to remember a little. She must practice scales and exercises: it was too humiliating to be at the mercy of stiff clumsy fingers.

She looked round the drawing-room and saw that it was empty of flowers. She took a basket and went out into the misty sharp-smelling garden and gathered dahlias and late roses. The flower petals seemed to caress her cheek as she stooped to them, the stalks to yield gladly and fall towards her. They loved and welcomed her. She chose, picked, stroked them, held them against her face with voluptuous delight in their colour, form and texture. It was thrilling, living alone and gathering flowers.

She looked around her, up at the sky. The evening was like Jennifer.

She went in to put her flowers in water.

Sheaves of cut lavender still lay drying on newspaper in the little room where the vases were kept. She finished stripping the brittle stalks, dividing the fragrant dried bluish heaps of buds and pouring them into bowls. The feel of lavender held in the palms and sifting through the fingers was delicious.

That day, years ago, when Roddy had come to tea, he had plunged both hands into a bowl of lavender in the hall and then buried his nose in them with a long ‘Ah!’ of satisfaction. This very _famille rose_ bowl she was filling had been the one. She had said that, when the fresh lavender was ready, she would make him lavender bags to keep among his ties and handkerchiefs.... How long ago!...

She longed for Roddy suddenly with a new and unenvenomed pang: she thought of him with tenderly regretful, half-maternal sorrow. He too would be lonely now. She would have liked to give him lavender, to walk with him in the autumn garden, quietly talking, sharing with him its loveliness and tranquillity. She would have liked to show him she wanted nothing now save to take his hand and tell him that she was sorry for him; that they must be friends now, always, remembering whom they had both loved.

The evening post came just as she had finished disposing the bowls of lavender about the house. It brought a letter from Julian.

Judith,

Now that I know that my moment is over and will never come again, I must speak to you these last few words; and then be silent. If you reply to me, I beg you not to say you hope we may still be friends. We may not. I am not one who has friends.

That night I went from you and from that vile town raging, cursing God and man. I had been thwarted, so I thought, by a monstrous trick of chance in the very hour of my life’s most delicious triumph. I never could endure failure, as you know. I have generally succeeded in getting what I wanted. I have been very successful. That is because I am such a supreme egoist; and because in spite of all my window-dressing and general ambiguity and deceitfulness I don’t--often--deceive myself. I know very well what I want: I go straight for it in spite of my path’s apparent twists and deviations; and indeed, indeed, Judith, I wanted you. I say to myself: ‘Fool! There are plenty of others worth the wanting;’ and yet--and yet it does not seem so. No! Despite a life’s endeavours, I am not proof yet against the slings and arrows. And when at last they do cease to assail me, it will, I begin to fear, be merely because I have become moribund, not philosophical.

God, I raged!--against Martin for dying, against you for being so foolish as to care, against myself for being made uncomfortable and ridiculous; for I was ridiculous in my own eyes because I had declared myself--shewn all my cards and lost.

Now I have become sane again.

Looking back on it all, I think (with surprise) that I was mistaken. It never would have done. You were not for me, or I for you. I never could have made you passionate--and that was essential. You are all dark and flat. If anything flashes in you it flashes hidden: you never would have let me warm all myself at you. I see now how you would have given me nothing but the polite, faintly curious attention which I have had from you since our first meeting. It would have been a tedious game trying to knock a spark out of you. I should soon have wearied of it. But before that I should have hurt you. I am a not unaccomplished mental sadist. It would not have done either of us much good.

About Martin: I thought you would like to know. They found his body on the beach two days later; and took him home and buried him beside his father. He had been cheerful all the time, enjoying his sailing; and went out in high spirits on the day of the accident. You must not grieve about him. He doesn’t know he was young and loved life and now can’t love it any more. He won’t get old and past loving it. He’ll never miss dead friends and lovers and long in vain to follow them. Fortunate Martin to die before he wanted to.... But there! These are empty consolations. I also loved my Martin. We shall never see him again. It’s little comfort to tell ourselves we shall stop missing him when we’re dead too. I am told his mother is calm and courageous, fortified by a complete faith in a loving God. Roddy I saw at the funeral, but had little speech with. He looked unhappy. A brief note I had from him yesterday, concerning the disposal of some of Martin’s things, remarks that it is easily the worst thing that’s ever happened. This is the only comment he has made or is likely to make--to me at least. He will get over it. He is now in Scotland with friends, shooting. I give you these tidings of him because I surmise that--you will like to have them. But _I know nothing of all that_ ... nor do I wish to know....

Ah, Judith, in spite of all I am very romantic and sentimental, and I say to myself that I have my memories; and they cannot be taken from me. You were very charming, very kind and tolerant. We did some good things together--good vivid things: though I suppose the fact of my physical presence never made them to you what yours made them to me: a superb excitement and intoxication. Twenty years hence when you’re long since married and have indulged your deplorable philoprogenitiveness, and are stout, Judith, stout, comfortable, domestic, I shall write one sentence upon a blank page and send it to you:

_Do you remember an inn, Miranda, Do you remember an inn?_

and perhaps--for one instant--you will stir in your fat and almost, _almost_ remember?... But no! There spoke indeed the sentimental egoist. For the inns you remember will not be those you visited with me; and you have made it clear--haven’t you?--that I may never call you Miranda. Besides, for my own part, like enough I shall by then have forgotten the amenities of bathing and omelette-eating and motoring by night, and disremembered all my apt quotations. You will be a placid matron and I a gaunt, stringy and withered madman: one of the kind with livid faces and blazing eyes, who dog young women down lonely lanes. So _never more, Miranda, never more_....

I read this through, my Judith, and I say to myself: words, words, words! And I think: for whom, for whom shall the close dark wrappings of your mind be laid aside and all the flame come leaping out? I sit and consider how in all these years I never so much as kindled a little glow to warm my hands at; and dream of how happily things might have fallen out if I hadn’t been as I am, and all had been different; and I feel lonely and wonder what I shall do without you. Don’t for God’s sake pity me. I shall forget you. But oh, Judith! you were lovely to me: never quite real. And still, still persists this ridiculous feeling that I should like to do something for you. There is nothing, I suppose?

Next month I go to Russia. For what purpose? I know not. To hear some music, and learn a smattering of the language; to write newspaper articles (“Impressions of an Unprejudiced and Unofficial Wanderer”), to pick up a few acquaintances, to forget you; to contract, perchance, some disease and die of it.... At all events, to Russia I go. Farewell.

J. F.

2

That night she woke from a deep sleep and knew that Martin was dead: not an object of horror tossed about decaying by the waves; not a thing alive somewhere in some nightmare form, appalled at its own death, watching, accusing, reproaching, desiring, reading the secrets of her heart; not a Martin going on obliviously in another, beatific life--but a dead man whose end had chanced upon him swiftly and mercifully, whose bones were in their grave beside his father’s, quietly mingling with the earth he loved. Martin had not died out of spite, or because her crookedness and Roddy’s had somehow wrought upon him like an evil charm and driven him to be drowned. He had been in high spirits, full of interest in which she had never played a part and so could never spoil; and in the midst of his enjoyment he had died. Drowning was a good death, so people said. Now neither happiness nor unhappiness was possible to him any more: that was all death meant. He had loved her, and now she was nothing to him; he was insensible to her remorse and her regrets. She dared at last to sink in that deep well of sorrow; but its waters were pure now, and in the end she drew herself from them refreshed.

To-morrow she would be able to write to Martin’s mother.

3

She wrote, briefly; and when she had finished, the paper was spotted here and there with irrepressible hot tears; but they were for Martin’s mother. She would never shed any more for Martin now.

She dried her eyes and wrote to Julian.

My dear,

I was extraordinarily glad to get your letter. I thought I had lost you as well as everybody else. You have done something for me, Julian: the thing I thought no one and nothing could do. You have made my imagination stop shrieking like a fiend in hell about Martin. It’s not only what you so wisely say about a young man’s death: it’s the knowing that he was found again, and buried in the earth as he wanted to be: that he isn’t a derelict, our beloved Martin, in the unfriendly sea. It has all stopped being monstrous to me; it is a natural grief and now I can bear to live again. He was in love with me and I was unkind to him and longed too late to tell him I never meant to be. That was the trouble. But it is all over now.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for what you have told me of Martin--and of Roddy whom I shall never see again, to whom I may not write and say how I grieve for his sake. You have done a great thing for me: so now it will be easier than ever--won’t it?--to dismiss me from your mind.

Oh, Julian, you wrote to me in a softened mood. Now you are regretting it, perhaps, or laughing at yourself and me. No, it never would have done. You imagined me: you say so yourself. Thank your stars you were spared the boringness, or worse, of seeing me come true. What coils and glooms and sickened moods poor Martin perhaps saved us! But I hope and believe we’d have ended it and parted, laughing, before we’d even thought of crying. I wish you much success and joy with all the not-impossibles who are to follow me.

What a year this has been, and how we grow up! Shall I really never see you again? It would be bathos after the elegant farewells we are now exchanging: but it may happen.

My harmless Julian, you would not dog a fly--let alone young women in lonely lanes. I do like you very much and I have the greatest respect for the high quality of your morals, and if I die a widow with lots of children I shall bequeath them all to you to bring up. You will have so many of your own that a few more will make no difference. Think how happy you’ll be instructing, admonishing and advising them.

What of Peter and of Mariella?--sad, strange, lovable Mariella and her child? Their pathos weighs upon me; but I can do nothing. _Only you can, Julian._ I should have liked news of them. Rumour has it that the house next door is to be put up for sale.

I am all uprooted, and don’t know what I shall do. I must begin to make plans. I suppose I shall never emerge from obscurity in any way. I used to think it a certainty that I should. I see you smile unkindly.

Yes, I will be Miranda to you, Julian. What we shared meant as much to me, in a different way, as it did to you; and it will never come again.

Perhaps there will never be any more inns, with anybody, in my life. Enchantment has vanished from the world. Perhaps it will never come back, save in memory. Perhaps I shared with you the last gleam I shall have of it.

JUDITH.

4

Martin’s mother answered, in a large, old-fashioned feminine handwriting, by return of post.

Dear Judith,

Of course I remember you. I do not forget pretty and charming people with sweet voices; and as a friend of Martin’s you are dear to me, as all his friends are, because they were responsible for so much of his happiness. It was kind of you to write. I miss my darling boy every moment of the day. Never was a better son born. But he would not have wished me to grieve, and so I try not to. He is in God’s keeping and I feel him very near to me; please God there will not be many years in store for me before he and I and his dear father are reunited.

It is a great comfort to think how happy his life was. His nature was all sun, and from his birth till the day he was taken from us I verily believe not a cloud came over him. Should not that console us?

Thank you again, dear Judith, and believe that Martin’s mother remembers you affectionately.

ELEANOR FYFE.

“Not a cloud came over him.” She would believe that and smile, ageing, stricken, lonely as she was, till her life’s end.

Perhaps after all it was so. Perhaps he had not allowed one woman’s petty favours and denials to make a shadow across the large and perpetual sunshine of his way. How little, after all, they had been together, how few words exchanged; how insignificant a figure she must have been, when all was said and done, among all the figures in his thousands of days!

Slowly, the darkness was lifting. Soon now, Jennifer’s letter must come, and a new beginning dawn out of this end of all things.

5

It came, one morning when the first gale had started to sweep in upon the season’s painted picture; a day when lights, shadows, leaves and wings of birds moved, flew, shone, flickered, paused in a restless harmony.

Darling,

Something makes me write to you now. I have often nearly started and then given it up, but now it feels as if I must, it feels rather like an evening that perhaps you don’t remember but I do, when I _had_ to come and see you after not having been able to for ages--that time you were ill.

I have felt such a sort of disgrace to myself, and you, and College, and English girlhood, going away like that, that I decided I’d better keep quiet for a bit. I _couldn’t_ write. But now I must. Have you been waiting and waiting for a letter, and thinking I’d forgotten you? Darling, I haven’t forgotten you. Perhaps you’ve forgotten me. But I don’t think so. It is most damnably difficult writing to you. As you see, this is more illegible even than usual with the effort. College does seem so far away. Higher Education for Women never did me any good--except it gave me you and you are an angel and so lovely. I feel very old and different. You remember my hair--you liked it--I have had it all cut off. Just because Geraldine’s was short I thought I must have mine the same. Just like me. Mother can’t get over it, she now thinks my morals are past praying about, which is a step in the right direction. It all waves and curls and it is marvellous to be without the weight of it and the bloody hairpins prodding my scalp under hats. I thought getting rid of it would be a good way to cut off the past as well. I thought I’d be a different person, more adapted to Geraldine, if I did it. And anyway I couldn’t bear her brushing it after you. You remember Geraldine. It was because of her I left College.

Darling, do you hate me now, you ought to. Oh, that last term and the night when I said good-bye to you. I try never to think about it, because it makes me feel so awful. I promised I’d explain everything, didn’t I, but it’s not much easier now than then because I suppose whatever’s been happening to you you’re still an innocent baby, while I feel like the most corrupt disreputable I don’t know what. Have you had a tremendous love-affair yet? I always used to think there was a man you were on the verge of loving. Perhaps he’s made you understand by now what it really means being in love. I loved you frightfully from the very first. I used to think about you night and day. I was in a fever about you. I began to be absolutely afraid of my feelings for you, they were so extremely strong. I couldn’t understand them. Then I met Geraldine, and I realized a lot of things. You know what I am--she swept me off my feet. I was too excited to think. She dazzled me. I simply let everybody and everything else go. _And all the time I loved you more than ever._ You may not believe it but it’s true. But I couldn’t explain to you how I felt--I didn’t care. You’d have hated it really, wouldn’t you? You are pure and ethereal and I am not. Nor was Geraldine. You used to look after me and kiss me as if you were my mother (not _really_ mine of course, who is quite awful, one of those lipless women. I suppose Nature wanted to readjust the balance of mouth and that accounts for mine.) I got into such a ghastly muddle over it all, I thought the best thing I could do was to go away. Geraldine clung rather--I knew she’d always be coming up, and I didn’t want her and you to meet, I knew she’d be jealous (she’s the most jealous person I ever knew). And I saw things could never be happy between you and me again. Oh, it was a hellish muddle. It doesn’t bear thinking of. I _had_ to go away and try and forget. Just like me. I’m such a coward. I went abroad with her and she gave me a marvellous time, I must say. I was absolutely fascinated by her to start with, almost hypnotized, and we went all over Europe. You know I can’t help more or less enjoying life frightfully, especially when it’s being rather wild and queer--and it was. But then one or two people I met fell in love with me and I suppose I fell a bit in love with them, I always do, and she got jealous and more and more full of accusations and reproaches. I was so sick of her I could hardly bear to look at her. She never could see a joke. So in the end I left her and came home. She goes on writing me reproachful letters, but I don’t answer them.

Oh, dear, you seem to be very far away from me now. I shall never find anyone who understands like you again. Why did you ever waste your time over me? I’m rotten and I always shall be. As you see I’m at home now, but I shan’t stay long. There are far too many raised eyebrows and disapproving chins about. I’m only waiting till I can raise some money and then I expect I’ll go abroad again. I always prophesied I’d come to a bad end, didn’t I? I seem to like nearly all the vices.

I suppose we shall never meet again. What’s the good? You’re probably full of new things and people by now, and I daresay I’m changed for the worse. Quite a Fallen Woman. And you wouldn’t like me any more. I simply couldn’t face it. But write to me once and tell me everything. Tell me if you understand. Tell me I was right to go away. Oh, I’d like to be back with you in Cambridge--just for a day, even for an hour--just you and me. There’ll never be anything like that, again.

Darling, have you cut off your hair I wonder. It was lovely too, parted in the middle, so smooth and thick and dark purple. You can’t have changed it. You will never change, will you, only get more and more deep and clear and yourself. I shall change, but you must always remember I love you.

JENNIFER.

She sat down clasping the letter between her palms, feeling the familiar glow steal over her, rising from the very sheets close-written in that sensitive erratic hand. Now, while her heart still beat with relief, joy, surprise, now while Jennifer seemed to have drawn near once more of her own accord, to be enquiring, holding out hands, hinting that she needed her--now it seemed plain at last what was to come. Whatever Jennifer had done, would do, they two must be together again.

She took up a pen and wrote.

My darling,

I knew your letter would come, because I wanted it so badly.

There are no new things and people. There is nothing. I haven’t got on very well without you and being happy seems to belong to a far-back time when you wore a green straw hat with a wreath of pink clover.

You have explained everything at last. Thank you, darling. Perhaps if we had both explained things more to each other, there wouldn’t have been such blanks and failures.

I am at home, alone, wondering, like you, what to do next. I am quite free. I want to be with you again. Let us meet and think of something to do together. I shall go to Cambridge for a day at the beginning of next term. Meet me there. I’d hate to find you again for the first time in a different setting. I promise not to remind you of the past or of things you want to forget. I too only want to see a future now.

I am living in an utter solitude, which is thrilling but insidious. This time of year always reminds me of you. I wish you were here to bathe at mid-day, when the haze is warm and golden, to share my fruity meals, and drift on the cold white-misted moony river after dark.

Tell me a date and I will come.

To think of you without your hair! Mine is exactly as it used to be.

JUDITH.

6

Some days later, the same post brought two letters. One was Jennifer’s answer, scribbled all but illegibly across a half-sheet of note-paper, dashed off, it seemed, in wild haste.

Oh, it would be too lovely to see you again, darling. I can’t seem to make plans, or think at all. You are alone and you sound as if you had been so terribly unhappy. Oh, poor darling. Yes, it would be marvellous to do something together, but what? You know you know _you know_ what I’m like. Why do you want to be bothered with me again. Remember how miserable I made you. But I must see you again--just to set eyes on you again would be heavenly. October 24th. Will that suit you. I will come to our tea-shop where we always went. Sit in the front room in the corner under the window. I’ll come for you there about four o’clock. _Don’t wait for me after 5._ I shall get there by car somehow. I thought if I didn’t come till the afternoon it would give you time to go out to College and see people if you want to. _I don’t want to._ Perhaps we could stay the night somewhere. What do you think. I can’t say anything more definite than this. I will _try_ to get there punctually. But if I wasn’t there--(here several words were so thickly inked over as to be indecipherable--and the letter ended in a desperate-looking scrawl)--It will be too too lovely to be with you again.

J.

The other letter made a bulky package. She opened it and saw many sheets of round unformed handwriting. At the top of the first page some other hand had written something minutely in pencil: Julian’s hand. She read:

You asked me for news of Mariella. Here it is. I think you guessed what I was neither perspicacious nor interested enough to suspect; or did even she fall into the common habit of “telling Judith?” There is something about this document which has made me feel far from flattered in my vanity or elevated in my self-esteem. What I send you is for you and no one else. After you have read it destroy it. You are discreet; and for some reason you care what becomes of us; and, last but not least, you have the artistic conscience, a sense of dramatic values. It seems to me this rounds us off nicely.

Tchehov? Turgenev?

J. F.

And underneath she read in Mariella’s childlike hand:

Dear Julian,

I think this is the first letter I have ever written to you. I’ve often wanted to write to you when I couldn’t bear it any longer. I’ve often nearly started and then I haven’t dared. I don’t know why I do now except that Martin dying does make me feel rather desperate. I’ve nobody now and he was allways nice to me. I think he guessed a little but never said. I could allways rely on him. I didn’t think unhappiness could ever last like this. I’ve had it for years and I’ve allways thought, well it must get better soon, something nice would happen, but it seems to get worse and worse and I must just get used to it now. Don’t you think there must be a Devil to account for all the damned misery in the world, I do. What am I to do with myself, I haven’t got anybody. If I beleived in God ever listening to us and minding what happened to us Id say it was him telling me to write to you, because it came to me last night all in a flash I must do it, I should be sort of saved if I did. I was deciding to kill myself but once Ive written all this out I dont think Ill want to. Ill go away and never see any of you again but Ill go on living.

What Im writing to you about is this. Will you take Peter and look after him--you will do it better than me, and you love him and you have always thought I didn’t know how to look after him. I expect its true. I feel very helpless and worried about him. I hated it when he was born, I didnt want him. I never ought to have married Charlie, you told me so, and then to have the baby--it meant I could never forget the awfull mistake and poor Charlie, and I wanted to forget him. I thought I could never love Peter--I _hated_ him at first--me to have a baby of all things, but after a bit I began to love him, he was so sweet, and instead of making me remember miserable things he seemed to be going to make up for everything and I thought perhaps I should be happy after all, bringing him up. And then that day you came back on leave and saw him when he was a baby I saw how you looked at him and I knew you were going to love him too. And I thought, if he cares for Peter perhaps he will like me better, but instead of that you seemed to dislike me more. I understand why of course. You couldn’t help loving him for himself and because he was Charlies, but because he was mine too you couldn’t help allways remembering the gastly quarell whenever you saw him with me. Thats why you wanted to have him to yourself away from me and allways told everybody I couldn’t look after him and oughtnt to have had a baby. You did tell everybody didn’t you? Poor little Peter I suppose it was true because bit by bit I got jealous of him. Oh what a devil I felt being jealous of my own son. And I adored him too but I couldnt bear to see you with him and you trying to take him away from me and him getting to love you better than me. I used to go away and as for crying, I’ve cried enough in the last few years to make up for all the years of my life when I never cried. I didn’t cry at all when poor Charlie was killed, I suppose I was numb and then there was this horror of the baby coming. I felt turned into stone.

And then began the time I thought you would marry Judith. I know you were in love with her, I suppose you still are, she is so pretty and clever as well. I was allways very fond of Judith, she was sweet to me, and I used to think Id try hard not to mind if you married her because it was so suitable and shed make you happy if she loved you. But I dont think she will love you, it wasnt you she wanted. It is awfull to think she has your love and doesnt want it. The waste, I cant bear it! If only all the people with unwanted love could hand it on to the people whod die for it and there were none of these gastly gaps--everybody loving someone who loves another person. It seems so funny it never struck you I was the one who could make you happy, that Id always love you and look after you, but of course its silly to talk like that. I know Im stupid. I never read books or had any education. I have always exasperated you but I think if youd loved me I might have been different. Id have lerned from you, Id have done anything to please you. I know I could have. But it never seemed worth while making an effort. I was allways your but and you expected me to be a fool. Its terrible how I iritate you. Why did I marry Charlie. He begged me and begged me and Id allways been so used to giving way to him. Besides I was so young then I couldnt beleive things wouldn’t come right if I wanted them to be. I thought if I went and announced to you I was going to marry Charlie youd realise I wasnt a baby any more, that I was grown up, and youd say no, I must marry you not Charlie. And then your fury when he told you and the revalation of how contemtable you thought me. I think you were jealous too, because Charlie had done a thing without telling you and of course youd got him out of so many scrapes you couldnt bear him turning to someone else, especially a person like me who I suppose you thought too stupid to mannage him at all. Poor Charlie I know you loved him and tried to be like a father to him but honestly I dont believe you mannaged him quite the right way. I suppose it was my damned pride that made me go through with marrying him. When he came and told me hed sworn never to speak to you again, his only brother, I felt it was all my fault and I couldnt desert him. I couldnt help loving him in a way, he was very lovable and he did depend on me so. I vowed to myself I’d stop him drinking etc, and then perhaps youd be grateful to me and thered be a reconcilliation. Poor Charlie, perhaps it was best he died, he was so weak. It was funny how he fell in love with me when he grew up. Somebody in my life has loved me anyhow. He really did. He longed so to have a son before he died too. Poor Grannie, she thought it was so wrong cousins marrying, but Charlie said no, he knew wed have wonderful children.

Prehaps Peter will be wonderful. Hes got his music, and he hasnt got Charlies wild histerrical temper. Hes a very good unselfish little boy, very afectionate. Will you please take him and bring him up. You will do it better than me. I couldnt write like this if I hadnt quite given up hope of you ever turning to me. When Martin died I thought perhaps it might bring us closer, you were the one person I wanted to see, it would have been such a comfort. But no, my last hope is gone. I must think only of Peter now. I dont see how I can do it, the one thing Ive got, but I know its best. Ill know hes getting the best chance, which will be a great weight off my mind. I know you dont want to send him to school till hes much older, Im glad because hes rather dellicate and not a bit like other little boys--you mannage all the money, so youll know how much there is for him. Quite enough I think. Prehaps you will let me have him now and then for little visits, and when he grows up prehaps Ill be able to explain to him--if Im alive. I dont really think I shall be. I promise Ill never intrefere or bother you, but please you must remember its not because I dont love Peter Im giving him to you, _but_ _because I love you_ and wish he was yours. It will be wonderful doing something for you. Itll make me allmost happy. Dont let him quite forget me, but I know he really loves you better than anyone. Oh before he was born I used to think if this was only Julians baby how happy Id be--I love you so much I would love to have your children and sufer pain for you--even though Ive never wanted children for myself. I know people allways say I am so cold and dull and sexless, so I am to everyone else because ever since I was very young you have absorped me intirely. To you I would have been more like a flame, to burn you up. But you were allways so cold and uninterested, you never thought I was atractive to look at even.

Oh, I shiver when I think of having produced Peter perhaps only to be as unhappy as me or to die young like Charlie and Martin. But if you look after him hes more likely to be alright. Please if you marry get someone who will be nice to him. Oh this is awfull. What am I doing. Please take him soon. Dont write me an answer but just say if you will take him and when and I will send him with the governess, but you will sack her wont you and educate him yourself. I never did like her. Well I have written it all, I feel very exhausted but Im glad its written. I shant ever need to pretend again, the strain was awfull. I dont quite know what I shall do. I think I shall sell the house. I couldn’t bear to live in it ever again after all thats happened. It was an unlucky house so I dont want to keep it on for Peter. I dare say I shall go on with this vet business, or anyway looking after dogs somehow. Im not stupid with animals if I am with peeple.

Oh, darling Martin, it is terrible without him. Why wasnt I with him in the sailing boat, it would have saved so much trouble. Do you really think we never meet the poeple we love again. I know youll say never, so dont answer. _Sometimes_ I feel it must be alright, I feel allmost a certainty this isnt the end.

I shant read this over. Ive written in such a hurry I expect its full of spelling mistakes etc., and youll laugh when you read it. I cant help it.

You mustnt dispise me for telling you I love you.

Good-bye from MARIELLA.

Beneath her signature came Julian’s pencil again: ‘I have sent for Peter.’

7

In the early afternoon, the taxi drew up beneath the archway of College, and she saw once more the red-tiled floor, the cold polished walls, the official bleakness and decorous ugliness of the entrance hall.

The portress had been her special friend. She opened the door of the lodge, expecting a joyful smile: but the elderly woman sitting at the table was unfamiliar.

‘Is the portress out?’

‘I’m the portress, Miss.’

‘I don’t think I remember you.’

‘No, Miss. I only came this term.’

‘Ah, yes. How do you like it?’

‘Well it’s all a bit difficult to get into, Miss. Hard like.’

‘Yes. I found that. I used to be here.’

‘Oh yes, Miss.’

Her eyes looked bored behind her glasses. She was thinking there were any amount of girls always coming and going. You couldn’t be expected to take an interest....

Judith looked around her and was seized with panic. The whole place was unfamiliar. Nothing recognized or greeted her.

A menace of footsteps drew near, resounding harshly on the tiles. A group of girls in gym tunics passed and stared. They must be first-year students. She could not remember one of them. She shrank from their curious glances and went swiftly down the corridor to the foot of the stairs.

A girl came running down, two steps at a time, saw her and paused, smiling shyly.

‘Hullo, Judith!’

‘Hullo!’

What was her name? Joan something? You could never have exchanged more than a few words with her. She was fair-haired, ordinary, rather shapeless and untidy, like so many others; but her smile was reassuring.

‘Have you come up to stay?’ she said.

‘No. Just for the day ... to see one or two people. How are you getting on?’

‘All right. How are you?’

‘Oh, all right.’

‘Well--I must fly. Good-bye.’

‘Good-bye.’

She was alone again.

She went up the shallow spiral staircase, and stood still at the top. There was scarcely a sound: it was the usual afternoon hush. She crept up to the mistress’s door and knocked; but there was no answer: then on to one or two other rooms, where the grave faces of dons would look quietly pleased to see her; but no reply came. Everyone must be out in the well-remembered October weather.

There was still Miss Fisher’s door. She had sent a note to Miss Fisher, her own don, saying she might come, to inquire about a possible job of some sort, to discuss her prospects, and ask for a written testimonial: so behind this door there would be someone who expected her.

But when she drew near she heard the sound of several voices raised as if in argument, and another shiver of panic took her. She let her raised hand drop to her side again and went quickly away; and the voices of a great crowd of unknown people seemed to come after her, questioning her intrusion, while she ran up the next flight of stairs.

Here was the familiar corridor and her own door, half-open, with a strange name on it. There was nobody inside. She peeped in. Nothing, nothing of her that remained. Instead of blue, purple and rose colour, black and orange stripes everywhere; an array of unprepossessing photographs on the mantelpiece, and some dirty pink plates and cups strewn about.

Only the window remained unchanged, holding up its great autumnal tree-tops to her gaze; but their unmoving pageant stared back and did not greet her. She was dispossessed entirely.

There on the corner was Jennifer’s door fast-closed, and bearing an unknown name. The sunshine sloped across to it in a dusty beam.

A maid came round the corner carrying a tray of crockery. She stopped, blushing with delight. It was Rose, who had always been so pretty and coy and smiling, and who had once brought a hot limp bunch of wallflowers from her mother’s garden, and laid them on her table. She was quite well thank you, and pleased to see you again. She and some of the other girls were only saying the other day they quite missed you. She wasn’t staying much longer now: she was leaving to get married.

Even Rose would soon be gone.

Now she must get out again as quickly as possible without being seen. She had meant to pause again and listen at Miss Fisher’s door; but now that was impossible. When now and then on her way down a footstep started, coming closer, a voice was raised, her heart beat in a wild terror of detection. Nobody must see her slinking out again from the place where, in her presumptuous folly, she had returned unannounced, expecting welcome. The place was terrible--a Dark Tower. She must escape. How had she been deluded for three years into imagining it friendly and secure--a permanent dwelling? In four months it had cast her off for ever.

Out again into the courtyard and quickly into the waiting taxi. Jennifer would appreciate the grimness of the story when she told her. She sat back weaving it into a dramatic recital for Jennifer’s sympathetic ears.

The town lay shining and smiling secretly in the sunlight, windless, its buildings, spires and streets caressed with a dusty golden light. Here, too, all was quiet. They were playing games. Where had been so many familiar faces, all seemed strange; and the few undergraduates she passed looked commonplace, dingy even, and schoolboyish.

She hesitated on the threshold of a bookshop and then passed on. To be recognised was now as great a dread as not to be recognised. What would people think of her, wandering about alone? How should she explain her presence to enquirers?

Trinity Great Court grieved in the sun for Martin. It had not yet quite forgotten him. It did not like its handsome young men to die.

If only Jennifer would come soon she could clasp her hand and feel a strange voluptuous stir at the heart of her sorrow; but to flit and pause alone like this, obliterating herself with a sort of shame, looking out for a chance familiar face and yet fearing to see one--this was appalling. It happened to people revisiting their university with twenty years between them and youth.

Tony must still be in Cambridge. He was a Fellow of his College now.... Suddenly conscious of his being very near, somewhere round the next corner perhaps, she dived for shelter into the tea-shop.

The young waitress came towards her with a smile; at sight of the pleasure and greeting in her face, Judith felt a weight lift.

‘Your usual table?’ she said in her soft voice.

‘Yes. I’m expecting my friend. You remember her.’

‘Yes, indeed I do. That’s nice.’

She led the way to the table in the corner, beneath the window, lingered a little chatting, and then was called away.

Nearly four o’clock. Jennifer might be late: she always was.

The room was empty save for two women in the opposite corner, engrossed in the usual whispered tea-shop confidences. What warmth and colour Jennifer would bring with her when she came! Judith thought.

“I won’t look towards the door; I’ll look out of the window; and then suddenly I’ll turn round and she’ll be there.”

Where she sat, the purple curtain obscured her conveniently from the street; if she craned her neck forward a little she could just see round the curtain and out of the window. Over the large shop-front directly opposite, on the other side of the narrow street, the blue blind was drawn down; and the plated glass made a dark mirror. Within its space she watched a shadow-show of people passing to and fro.

The clocks chimed the hour.

The street was filling up now. It was amusing to keep one’s eyes fixed on the blue blind, to see only an insubstantial noiseless world of human forms, cars and motor-bicycles, and be blind to the confusion of human and mechanical reality collecting outside. She would look only at the blue blind and see Jennifer’s reflection approaching before she saw herself. Her heart beat at the thought.

The room was filling up now. She tipped Jennifer’s chair against the table, for fear it should be taken; resumed her watching.

The space of glass cleared suddenly, was empty of all its shapes. She stared into the dim blank, waiting.

Then two shadows slid slowly in and paused. She watched them calmly, knew them without shock of alarm or surprise. Roddy bent his head to light his pipe. She knew the individual set of his feet, his long legs, the slender rather round-shouldered line of his back. She could almost discern his curious blunt profile, with its upward sweep of brow and eye. Tony was with him. His short figure had its hands in its pockets, its head raised towards Roddy, nodding slightly as if in earnest conversation. The noise in the street seemed to die away, and in the long hushed breathless space of a minute, Roddy lit his pipe, threw away the match, passed a hand over his hair in a familiar gesture, nodded and laughed, it seemed, looking down at Tony with that queer half-turn of the head; and then moved on, slipped with his companion towards the edge of the pane; and vanished.

He had come to see Tony then, just as if nothing had happened: as if he had not searched the sea for dead Martin; as if there were no reason not to go smoking, laughing, talking past the great court of Trinity.

Did he miss Martin? Had he put from him the memory of the tragedy with a characteristic shrug of the shoulders? Did he ever think with momentary discomfort of Judith?

Tony would have him all to himself now: no Martin, no Judith to interfere. He would be happy. They would come closer to each other; and never again would Judith be able to step in between them; for there was no more Judith. What were they talking of so earnestly--what, what? The old yearning to know, to understand, returned for a moment, and was followed by an utter blankness; and she knew that she had never known Roddy. He had never been for her. He had not once, for a single hour, become a part of real life. He had been a recurring dream, a figure seen always with abnormal clarity and complete distortion. The dream had obsessed her whole life with the problem of its significance, but now she was rid of it.

She had tried to make a reality out of the unreality: she had had the power to drag him once, reluctantly, from his path to meet her, to force a convergence where none should ever have been; and then disaster had resulted.

She seemed to wake up suddenly. Roddy, Roddy himself had been passing in the street outside. She could have seen him, and, instead, her eyes had not wavered from his reflection. A shadow laid on a screen and then wiped off again: he had never been much more; it was fittingly symbolic that she should have allowed him to pass thus for the last time from her eyes. For it was certain that she would never see him again.

Half-past four. She would not watch the window for Jennifer any more. For the first time it occurred to her that Jennifer might not come. She beckoned to the waitress and ordered China tea and scone.

‘I won’t wait any longer for my friend. Something must have delayed her.’

She sat on, crumbling the scone, sipping tea. She counted twenty-three times over very slowly; and then looked at the door. Then she counted again. She took an illustrated paper from the window-sill and studied it. If she went straight through its pages without looking up, Jennifer would come.

Quarter to five. Jennifer might have made a mistake about the tea-shop: perhaps she was sitting waiting somewhere else. But that was impossible. Perhaps she had confused the time, the date....

She took Jennifer’s letter from her bag. October 24th. Four o’clock. “_Don’t wait for me after five._”

What was it that she had scratched out? She scrutinized the thick erasure; but there was no clue.

The clocks struck five. When the last one had finished chiming she rose, paid her bill and went out again into the happy-looking streets, where there was nothing more now to fear or to desire.

* * * * *

The train steamed out of the station.

Farewell to Cambridge, to whom she was less than nothing. She had been deluded into imagining that it bore her some affection. Under its politeness, it had disliked and distrusted her and all other females; and now it ignored her. It took its mists about it, folding within them Roddy and Tony and all the other young men; and let her go.

Darkness fell, and the ploughed fields went wheeling and slipping by, the smoke-white evening vapours laid low and heavy over their dim chill violet expanses.

She was going home again to be alone. She smiled, thinking suddenly that she might be considered an object for pity, so complete was her loneliness.

One by one they had all gone from her: Jennifer the last to go. Perhaps Jennifer had never for an instant meant to come back; or perhaps her courage had failed her at the last moment. Wise Jennifer shed her past as she went along; she refused to let it draw her back to face its old coils and perplexities and be tangled in them once again. She did not want to return to Judith and love her and be troubled by her once more; or else return to find that all was different, that in this ten months’ interval life had separated them beyond hope of reunion. Yes, Jennifer had escaped again. She had never intended to come back.

Yet it was impossible to feel self-pity. Perhaps it was the train’s monotonous reiterated motion and murmur that benumbed the mind, soothing it to a state that seemed like happiness.

When she reached home she would find that the cherry-tree in the garden had been cut down. This morning she had seen the gardener start to lay the axe to its dying trunk. Even the cherry-tree would be gone. Next door the board would be up: For Sale. None of the children next door had been for her. Yet she, from outside, had broken in among them and taken them one by one for herself. She had been stronger than their combined force, after all.

She was rid at last of the weakness, the futile obsession of dependence on other people. She had nobody now except herself; and that was best.

This was to be happy--this emptiness, this light uncoloured state, this no-thought and no-feeling.

She was a person whose whole past made one great circle, completed now and ready to be discarded.

Soon she must begin to think: What next?

But not quite yet.

THE END

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

visit once every holidays=> visit once every holiday {pg 18}

He sat on table=> He sat on the table {pg 79}

shoulders wtih=> shoulders with {pg 112}

sense if impotence=> sense of impotence {pg 183}

and I a guant=> and I a gaunt {pg 326}

scribbed all but illegibly=> scribbled all but illegibly {pg 335}