Philomena Grey looked out of the window and said nothing. But she smiled to herself because all this talk of Aggie and Laura was amusing. She could make Aggie look like a marsh-mallow.
After fifteen years of being a good wife to Gibbie, and having babies, and rubbing in cleansing cream at night, she had forgotten what it was like to be in love. She had forgotten how the heart can stop at the casual mention of a name. All the beginning of the journey had been so exasperating and hot, and it had become delectable just because Corny came in and said: Hugo’s here. She had thought that the power to feel so intensely must have been ground out of her long ago, that not only time but marriage would have destroyed it. Latterly she had come to identify it with her lost virginity, a thing to be remembered indulgently but not regretted. Those transports, ardours and despairs of her girlhood had never come to anything and she used to tell her more romantic friends that she had no wish to go through it all again.
But now those fifteen years of common sense had suddenly become as tiresome and trivial as an interval spent at a railway station. She had scarcely been alive at all except in moments of aching melancholy, apprehensions of waste, of power unused and youth misspent, which had sometimes assailed her on fine mornings in the spring. All the time she had been waiting, half asleep, for some kind of deliverance. And she had called it happiness. Perhaps it was, but in that case how much better to be miserable! How much better to be going through it all again.
For five minutes she stared fixedly cut of the window half afraid that her face might hold some radiance which would betray her. But she need not have troubled for Gibbie was reading and Adrain Upward was saying:
“… The greatest loss to literature in this century …”
They were talking of Paul Wrench. It was one of the things people would be saying this week-end. And, poor man, he was so much more comfortable to think of, now that he was dead. For there had always been the disquieting possibility that he might one day go altogether too far. But now he could go no further. As might have been expected his last letter had been written to Corny. All last letters of poets were written to Corny.
Corny was taking a proprietary tone. So was Adrian. Paul Wrench had no defence against them now. He could no longer flout their kind endeavours. Adrian, it appeared, had tried to get him a grant from the Royal Literary Fund. Corny could have told him that it was no use. Incredible though it might be, he had contributed a poem to Corny’s famous album. Corny, in a churchy voice a little raised above the din of the train, recited it, adding that Wrench had died of cancer of the throat. Corny always knew that sort of thing.
So much easier, thought Philomena, to talk about people when they were finished. Now Wrench was in the past. But he had managed to make even death appear less banal and more irrelevant than usual. For in his case there was nothing of the harmonious rounding off, the full close which sentiment requires. It was a jagged, uncouth interruption, and it added no real significance to life. He had not crossed the bar or demanded more light, but had been dragged away, protesting irritably, from the things which he wished to do. Now he would never do them, and that was all.
The senselessness of this hiatus came home to her as she looked out of the window and saw Brookwood Cemetery, which was swinging past them. Acre upon acre of the indifferent earth was strewn with haphazard pieces of stone. Crosses and slabs of marble stood up starkly among the cypresses carving the view into a thousand awkward, unrelated angles. The wreaths heaped upon the newer graves, the black figures pacing slowly down the avenues, the very blades of grass were all sunk into the same stony torpor. They had no meaning at all, for they symbolised a void space in human imagination.
“Depressing …” thought Philomena, as she turned her head away. “Perhaps cremation … but even then … those horrid little urns … one has to do something with them … have I ever seen a grave … Keats … I wasn’t as moved as I expected to be, but perhaps that was because I was annoyed with Gibbie. He’d been tiresome … what was it? Oh yes, it was the day he dropped his Baedeker into the Tiber … fifteen years … and now … now … Hugo’s here … don’t let this be spoilt …”
But it was, already, a trifle spoilt. She came back to it in a different mood. Her excursion among cemeteries had stressed the precious brevity of this life which she had been wasting and she felt angry with herself. The rapture of the moment was not enough. She must begin to think ahead. The exquisite pause, the sense of standing on the threshold of new delight, had passed away from her.
Hugo was coming down to Syranwood. But what was going to happen? Did she want anything to happen? Did she intend it? And, if she was going to let things happen, at what point ought she to convey the truth to Gibbie? As an honest woman she ought, perhaps, to say something and as yet she had said nothing. There was so little to say. Some states of mind are too rare, too delicate, to be translated into common speech and she had got no further than a state of mind. To speak at all would have been to say more than the truth.
“Oh Gibbie, you know that night, that night of Stella’s dance? I want to tell you that Hugo drove me home and we thought it would be fun to go down to Kew, and we got there just at sunrise and climbed in from the towing-path just opposite Zion House. Yes, I know, I’ve told you that part of it. But ever since that morning I’ve thought of nothing but Hugo. He is a little in love with me. Oh yes, I know all about Caro Chappell but I’m not worrying about her. And I don’t think he was. I had on my white chiffon, and I felt I was en beauté: I don’t believe anybody could have helped being in love with me. Of course it was partly that the gardens were quite empty and the may was out and it all looked very romantic. No, he didn’t make love to me, more than he always does to everybody. But he was so delightful that I can’t help thinking about him all the time. I’ve never enjoyed myself so much in the whole of my life. It makes me happy now to think of it. And I don’t propose to stop thinking of it. But nothing happened. And I daresay nothing ever will. But if anything ever should … I felt I ought to tell you.”
It was impossible. And yet perfect frankness had been Philomena’s creed for years. It was the bedrock of a happy marriage, and her marriage with Gibbie had been happy in spite of the days when he dropped his Baedeker into the Tiber. Nothing must happen that would involve her in disloyalty to Gibbie. Their married harmony must be preserved, but there ought to be room inside it for this lovely thing, this renewal of youth. There must be room in it. Other people managed to eat their cake and have it. If one had courage, if one was frank, there need be no disloyalty. She could think of half a dozen instances among her romantic friends.
Now they had got past Brookwood Cemetery and were back among the gardens of a suburb where laundry fluttered in the sun among the aerial posts, and stout men in their shirt sleeves mowed small lawns. She remembered that she must change her own laundry. Gibbie’s shirts were a perfect disgrace and there was iron-mould on the sheets every other week. She would write for the pricelist of that Hounslow place as soon as she got home on Monday. There was a whole lot of things to remember on Monday. A dentist’s appointment must be made for Chloe’s teeth. It ought surely to be possible to straighten them without subjecting the poor child to those hideous wires. And Susan had begun to tread over her shoes very badly: probably she had weak ankles and these must be remedied. It was all the result of not having very much money. Not that Gibbie was really poor, but he was not as rich as most of the people they knew. Rich people never have anything to attend to but their better feelings. Their children’s teeth are straight and they have their pick of parlour-maids. Philomena was still looking for a parlour-maid, because Ada’s month would be up on Tuesday week. She must go to Mrs. Duckett’s Registry again on Monday. She must make a list of all the things to be done on Monday … laundry … teeth … shoes … Ada … it was damnably unfair! For nearly half her life she had been smothered under teeth and laundries, when really she was not that sort of person at all. She had married too young. She had never lived her life. They (some hidden influences, not specified) ought not to have allowed her to marry so young.
“Not that I blame Gibbie. I love him. Poor, darling Gibbie! He couldn’t get on without me and I’ll never … and the children … oh no, I haven’t forgotten them … of course he comes first, and the children. That’s solid. That’s lasting. Because I shall be old some day and then … those awful old women with no ties … I could never … but I have got an immortal soul after all, and it’s smothered … yes smothered under laundry baskets.”
Gibbie must be made to understand. Surely, when he loved her so much, he would give her room to live. All that wonderful power was still in her body—the power to charm, to soothe, to ravish, to console. She had far more to give than Gibbie or the children would ever need. It was not fair. She had married too soon. Somebody was to blame. Not Gibbie; not her parents (though Mother might have told me); not the children (they can’t help having teeth and feet, poor angels); not even Ada. But all of them together.
She realised that she had been making furious grimaces and that Adrian Upward, who sat opposite, was looking at her over the top of his paper in surprise.
“I was rehearsing things to say to the laundry,” she explained hastily.
Sir Adrian tried to look as though he did not know what a laundry did or why one should say things to it. He had mixed so much with dukes that he had caught a little of the ducal vagueness about the baser details of life. He could not telephone from a public call-box without making a muddle, and he frequently lost his way on the Underground, which was a triumph of mind over matter as anyone who knew his home life could testify. Philomena, remembering the smell of cabbage in the Upward hall, asked after his sister Betsy, who had kept house for him since the death of his wife. Adrian replied briefly that Betsy was well. And the children? They were well too, so far as he knew all six of them were, as usual, in the enjoyment of rude health.
Only by dissociating himself from Betsy and the children could Sir Adrian Upward hope to hold his own at Syranwood. For he was quite horribly and squalidly poor, and as a family man he would have been impossible. But very poor bachelors, if they can sing for their supper, have a certain appeal for the benevolent rich. So that Adrian was obliged to ignore the callow brood which he had so rashly begotten, and to suppress their obliging aunt.
Very few people had even seen Miss Betsy Upward. She was said to have a mop of short grey hair, red hands and pince-nez. But Philomena was obliged to see her occasionally because Gibbie, who was Adrian’s publisher, insisted upon asking her to dinner. In many ways Gibbie was tiresomely kind-hearted. Three times a year did Betsy, in a ready-made lace tunic from the Kensington High Street, come ambling shyly in behind Adrian. She always short-circuited conversation at her end of the table and it was difficult to know who to put next to her. Nor was there any necessity for it at all. She wasn’t even the man’s wife, merely a poor relation who happened to keep house for him. But Gibbie thought that she was badly treated and now the mere mention of her name set the wheels of his benevolence spinning. He began asking Adrian to drop in with her one evening, though it was barely six weeks since the last time. Philomena did not support him as she should and knew that her languid warmth was obvious. But later on, if he should reproach her, she would make a stand.
He was always wishing these dreary women on to her. Women with whom she had nothing in common. All his friends seemed to have made a point of marrying dull wives. But where wives were concerned she had nobly done her duty. She had sat with them in polite boredom for long hours by the drawing-room fire so that he could get his cronies to himself over the port. In no way had she ever cut him off from anyone whose companionship he valued. But as regards Betsy …
The train came to an extraordinary jerking stop in the middle of a green field.
An idea that something was wrong occurred to all of them simultaneously. It was so much more sudden than the usual slow-down and pause. Corny disappeared into the corridor. In a surprised silence they could hear the voices of the people in the next compartment. Adrian poked his head out of the window and saw a trainful of heads, all poked out, as a whisper of the dramatic spread.
“It’s a special for the Prince of Wales,” he reported.
A contrary rumour travelled from the other end of the train a moment later. The engine driver had fallen down dead of heart disease.
“I wonder if we’ll be long,” speculated Philomena. “Wouldn’t it be nice to get out for a bit and pick those wild roses?”
Gibbie at once protested. She had meant him to. Supposing the train went on? Well, of course, she had not really wanted to get out. He might have known that. But she wanted someone with whom to share the impulse. She wanted him to say:
“Adorable creature! Yes, let’s!”
There were people who might have liked being left behind with her in a green field. There were women who missed trains as they chose, who were above rules and time-tables and Gibbie was quite capable of finding them most attractive. But because she was his wife she might have no whims or caprices. She was just there to see that his children’s teeth grew straight.
“I didn’t really want to,” she said coldly.
“And how could I know that?”
Adrian, at the window, reported that there was a bomb on the line.
“No, but what is it really?” demanded Gibbie.
“When Corny comes back he’ll tell us. I expect he’s gone to find out.”
Corny had gone to find out, guided by that instinct which had caused him to be in at a record number of deaths. He went straight down the train to Aggie’s compartment. For it was clear to him that somebody had pulled the alarm cord and nobody else on the train was so likely to have done it. He arrived almost as soon as the guard, in time to hear Discobolos exclaim:
“I tell you I never touched it. She pulled it herself. And I suppose she’ll tell you that I assaulted her. But if ever a woman asked for it …”
Aggie sat, infinitely withdrawn and nunlike, in her corner. She lifted her eyes slowly and looked at the guard who was asking if she really had pulled the cord.
“No,” she said.
“Well,” began Discobolos …
“Now then!” said the guard sternly, “You be quiet until you’re spoken to. Did he offer to insult your ladyship?”
“No. Oh no,” said Aggie.
Discobolos, who thought the guard was being funny, began to recover countenance. He suggested that perhaps the little lady hadn’t known what she was doing, but as one man to another … and he produced a case of Treasury notes.
Aggie spoke again, even more faintly. She thought the man might be drunk and perhaps they would put him into another carriage.
“Now then! Now then!” expostulated the guard. “You can’t use language like that, sir. Not here. You come along with me and I’ll trouble you for your name and address.”
“You take a tart’s word against mine? It’s blackmail. That’s what it is. She pulled it herself. It’s a put-up thing. That’s what it is. I’ll get you sacked for this …”
“Now then. You come along out of here.”
The victim was dragged into the corridor where they heard the guard saying:
“You know who that lady is? Well, she’s Lady Aggie Melotte. That’s who she is. And I’ll trouble you to stop using insulting language. All right, Bill. Let her go.”
The train started with another sudden jerk, and Corny, having witnessed the final, speechless collapse of Discobolos, went in to comfort Aggie. He wanted badly to know who had really pulled the cord.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Aggie. “He was a howwid man. Have you got me any tea, Corny?”
“No, Aggie. I told you. There isn’t any.”
“Oh, very well, then, have you got a pencil? I’ll give you a gibbet.”
She gave him Great unaffected vampires and the moon, but he lost because his mind was wandering. In imagination he was telling this latest Aggie story to an appreciative audience. Not that he would have much opportunity for doing so, which was a pity. For Aggie stories had come to be a mark of bad taste, since so many of them were told by people who did not know her.
“L” he said vaguely.
“You’ve been gibbeted once for an L,” scolded Aggie. “You aren’t trying. Go and fetch Hugo. Perhaps he can be more amusing.”
“Hugo’s asleep.”
“Well then wake him up.”
Corny obediently edged his way down the swaying train to take another peep into Hugo’s compartment. It was impossible to know whether its occupant was asleep or not. He still lay at full length on the seat of the carriage and his eyes were shut, but there was a taut forbidding look about his mouth and Corny would rather have put his head into a wasps’ nest than disturb him. So, after waiting for a few minutes, he edged away. Unable to face Aggie without Hugo he took refuge in a smoking carriage with a stranger, a very large, red, raw man with blue P & O labels on his battered portmanteaux. This person did not look up when Corny joined him, but after a little while a Will like a steam roller commanded the intruder to take himself off and stop polluting an All-White-Sahib’s carriage. Corny had never been so much aware of an ousting influence before, though mental behests of the sort were frequently directed at him, did he but know it. Worse still, it was an unconscious will. The stranger was absorbed in a copy of (not the Daily Mail, for Corny peeped to see) the Lancet. He was not merely glancing through it, he was mopping up information from the page in front of him with the concentrated fury of a Hoover scouring a carpet. But the nearness of Corny was displeasing and mechanically he flicked the annoyance away. His soul said:
“Go.”
Corny, with a faint squeak of protest, went. He took another cautious peep at Hugo and this time he met with open, hostile eyes. They stared at him without encouragement, and were tightly shut again. Even to Corny that hint was unmistakable. He went to wash his hands.