Dangerous Ages Part 30

"Neville is extremely ill," Mrs. Hilary said, quite untruly, but that was, to do her justice, the way in which she always saw illness, particularly Neville's. "And worried to death about Gerda, who seems to have gone off her head since that accident in Cornwall. She is still sticking to that insane, wicked notion about not getting married."

Nan had heard before of this.

"She'll give that up," she said, coolly, "when she finds she really can't have Barry if she doesn't. Gerda gets what she wants."

"Oh, you all do that, the whole lot of you.... And a nice example _you're_ setting the child."

"She'll give it up," Nan repeated, keeping the conversation on Gerda.

"Gerda hasn't the martyr touch. She won't perish for a principle. She wants Barry and she'll have him, though she may hold out for a time.

Gerda doesn't lose things, in the end."

"She's a very silly child, and I suppose she's been mixing with dreadful friends and picked up these ideas. At twenty there's some excuse for ignorant foolishness." But none at thirty-three, Mrs. Hilary meant.

"Barry Briscoe," she added, "is being quite firm about it. Though he is desperately in love with her, Neville tells me; desperately."

He's soon got over you, even if he did care for you once, and even if you did send him away, her emphasis implied.

In Nan, casually flicking the ash off her cigarette, a queer impulse came and went. For a moment she wanted to cry; to drop hardness and lightness and pretence, and cry like a child and say "Mother, comfort me. Don't go on hurting me. I love Barry. Be kind to me, oh be kind to me!"

If she had done it, Mrs. Hilary would have taken her in her arms and been all mother, and the wound in their affection would have been temporarily healed.

Nan said nonchalantly "I suppose he is. They're sure to be all right.... Now what next, mother? It's getting dark for seeing things."

"I am tired to death," said Mrs. Hilary. "I shall go back to those dreadful rooms and try to rest.... It has been an awful day.... I hate Rome. In '99 it was so different. Father and I went about together; he showed me everything. He _knew_ about it all. Besides...."

Besides, how could I enjoy sight-seeing after that scene this morning, and with this awful calamity that has happened?

They went back. Mrs. Hilary was desperately missing her afternoon hour with Mr. Cradock. She had come to rely on it on a Wednesday.

5

Nan sat up late, correcting proofs, after Mrs. Hilary had gone to bed.

Galleys lay all round her on the floor by the stove. She let them slip from her knee and lie there. She hated them....

She pressed her hands over her eyes, shutting them out, shutting out life. She was going off with Stephen Lumley. She had told him so this morning. Both their lives were broken; hers by Barry, whom she loved, his by his wife, whom he disliked. He loved her; he wanted her. She could with him find relief, find life a tolerable thing. They could have a good time together. They were good companions; their need, though dissimilar, was mutual. They saw the same beauty, spoke the same tongue, laughed at the same things. In the very thought of Stephen, with his cynical humour, his clear, keen mind, his lazy power of brain, Nan had found relief all that day, reacting desperately from a mind fuddled with sentiment and emotion as with drink, a soft, ignorant brain, which knew and cared about nothing except people, a hysterical pa.s.sion of anger and malice. They had pushed her sharply and abruptly over the edge of decision, that mind and brain and pa.s.sion. Stephen, against whom their fierce anger was concentrated, was so different....

To get away, to get right away from everything and everyone, with Stephen. Not to have to go back to London alone, to see what she could not, surely, bear to see--Barry and Gerda, Gerda and Barry, always, everywhere, radiant and in love. And Neville, Gerda's mother, who saw so much. And Rosalind, who saw everything, everything, and said so. And Mrs.

Hilary....

To saunter round the queer, lovely corners of the earth with Stephen, light oneself by Stephen's clear, flas.h.i.+ng mind, look after Stephen's weak, neglected body as he never could himself ... that was the only anodyne. Life would then some time become an adventure again, a gay stroll through the fair, instead of a desperate sickness and nightmare.

Barry, oh Barry.... Nan, who had thought she was getting better, found that she was not. Tears stormed and shook her at last. She crumpled up on the floor among the galley-slips, her head upon the chair.

Those d.a.m.ned proofs--who wanted them? What were books? What was anything?

6

Mrs. Hilary came in, in her dressing-gown, red-eyed. She had heard strangled sounds, and knew that her child was crying.

"My darling!"

Her arms were round Nan's shoulders; she was kneeling among the proofs.

"My little girl--Nan!"

"Mother...."

They held each other close. It was a queer moment, though not an unprecedented one in the stormy history of their relations together.

A queer, strange, comforting, healing moment, the fleeting shadow of a great rock in a barren land; a strayed fragment of something which should have been between them always but was not. Certainly an odd moment.

"My own baby.... You're unhappy...."

"Unhappy--yes.... Darling mother, it can't be helped. Nothing can be helped.... Don't let's talk ... darling."

Strange words from Nan. Strange for Mrs. Hilary to feel her hand held against Nan's wet cheek and kissed.

Strange moment: and it could not last. The crying child wants its mother; the mother wants to comfort the crying child. A good bridge, but one inadequate for the strain of daily traffic. The child, having dried its tears, watches the bridge break again, and thinks it a pity but inevitable. The mother, less philosophic, may cry in her turn, thinking perhaps that the bridge may be built this time in that way; but, the child having the colder heart, it seldom is.

There remain the moments, impotent but indestructible.

CHAPTER XIV

YOUTH TO YOUTH

1

Kay was home for the Christmas vacation. He was full, not so much of Cambridge, as of schemes for establis.h.i.+ng a co-operative press next year.

He was learning printing and binding, and wanted Gerda to learn too.

"Because, if you're really not going to marry Barry, and if Barry sticks to not having you without, you'll be rather at a loose end, won't you, and you may as well come and help us with the press.... But of course, you know," Kay added absently, his thoughts still on the press, "I should advise you to give up on that point."

"Give up, Kay? Marry, do you mean?"

"Yes.... It doesn't seem to me to be a point worth making a fuss about.

Of course I agree with you in theory--I always have. But I've come to think lately that it's not a point of much importance. And perfectly sensible people are doing it all the time. You know Jimmy Kenrick and Susan Mallow have done it? They used to say they wouldn't, but they have.

The fact is, people _do_ do it, whatever they say about it beforehand.

And though in theory it's absurd, it seems often to work out pretty well in actual life. Personally I should make no bones about it, if I wanted a girl and she wanted marriage. Of course a girl can always go on being called by her own name if she likes. That has points."

"Of course one could do that," Gerda pondered.

"It's a sound plan in some ways. It saves trouble and explanation to go on with the name you've published your things under before marriage.... By the way, what about your poems, Gerda? They'll be about ready by the time we get our press going, won't they? We can afford to have some slight stuff of that sort if we get hold of a few really good things to start with, to make our name."