Hugo, at breakfast, was very brisk and very determined not to let the grass grow under his feet. He had made a vow to read his play to Aggie before lunch time, and he began at once to clear the ground. He must find out where everybody was going to be that morning in order to manœuvre Aggie into some other place. Laura, it appeared, would be going to church again and so would Lady Geraldine and Philomena. Corny was also to be taken, because it was encouraging for Mr. Comstock to see a man or two in the Syranwood pew. Gibbie, Alec and Adrian were to play golf. At least there had been some talk of it the night before.
“And Bechstrader?” asked Hugo, thinking that he did not want an obbligato accompaniment on the gong.
“He’d better come to church,” said Laura. “My mother likes to have the pew quite full.”
“But don’t you want a foursome?”
Gibbie, to whom this was said, looked rather blue. And Hugo, remembering with a shiver the menace which hung over both their heads, hastened to reassure him.
“Oh, I can’t come. I’ve got to read a play to Aggie. But what about Usher? I was wondering if he’d like to borrow my clubs. Where is he, by the way? Has he had breakfast?”
“He’s telephoning,” said Laura.
“But he was telephoning ten minutes ago. He’s taking his time.”
“He’s ringing up the Guthrie Institute.”
When they got out into the hall again Ford was still telephoning in the butler’s pantry. The door was open and his voice rang harshly through the hall. It seemed that he had got hold of his assistant, for he was saying:
“No. I mean the carcasses we dissected yesterday. Yes, I know. I want you to look at the ovaries … All right. Ring me up when you have. It was just an idea. Somebody … it came into my head this morning… yes … well, ring me up.”
Ford came out of the pantry and Hugo asked if he would like to play golf.
“With you?” asked Ford in surprise.
“No. I’m afraid I can’t. But Alec wants to make up a foursome.”
Ford explained that he must wait in the house all the morning in case a call came through from the Guthrie Institute. Meanwhile he proposed to go into the library and play for himself the records of five quartettes that he had found there. No power on earth should make him play golf with Alec.
“Then that’s all right,” thought Hugo. “I’ll take Aggie into the drawing-room.”
Having forgotten the girls he thought that he had accounted for everybody. So he sat in the hall, to make sure of catching Aggie when she came downstairs, and began to do the crossword puzzle in a Sunday paper. Everybody would be sure to pass through the hall sooner or later, and in this way he would be able to pass the time of day with each of them in turn and regain such good graces as he had lost the night before.
“A word in four letters, beginning with S, and meaning third thoughts,” he said to Adrian, who was the first to appear.
“I don’t degrade myself,” replied Adrian sombrely. “I’ve always stood out against those horrible things. What is everybody going to do?”
“You’re going to play golf.”
“Am I? You don’t want the whole of that paper to yourself, do you? Give me some of it. I want to see what they say about Wrench.”
As Adrian read the obituary comments he rustled the sheets and clicked his tongue.
“Nobody ever began to understand him,” he complained. “As one of his few personal friends I can’t but feel …”
“Could it be stet?” murmured Hugo.
“Of course, in the most vital period of his life, when he was living in that lighthouse, one didn’t know him.”
“I did,” said Hugo.
“You did? Really! I never knew that. What sort of impression did he make on you? Was he writing then? Poetry?”
“I believe so,” said Hugo. And added privily: “So was I.”
He must have been writing poetry because his wash-hand-stand drawer was full of it. But he could not remember a word of it. Nor could he remember what sort of impression Wrench had made. But he recalled the lighthouse cottage, and the tamarisks blown flat by sea breezes, and the scratch of sand on the oilcloth of the floor. The rocks going up to the cottage had been covered with a queer low-growing fleshy plant that smelt sour when it was crushed. Perhaps he had written poetry about that. The Other Life flashed past him and was gone, as he thought of the tamarisks and the sand and the salt in the air. It was like being in a train that shot for a moment out of a tunnel into sunlight and then back into darkness. The glimpse was too short. He could not be sure of anything, only that there had been light and space and the sea tossing. If you put your ear to the shell you’ll hear the sea. Once when he was a little boy he had a shell that he used to take to bed with him. He could shut his eyes and listen to it. Now his memory was like a shell. If he held it close, close to his ear, he could catch faint echoes. He was nothing now but a man listening to a shell …
Adrian’s voice sounded pleasant and grieved in the resounding emptiness of the hall. He was taking the opportunity of saying all that he had been unable to say the evening before, at dinner. Indeed, he said it better, for he had had time to think it over and put it into shape. His full estimate of the loss to literature went booming gently out into the garden and up the curve of the stairs. So that Solange, running lightly down, caught echoes of it before she came into sight.
“One feels one must go,” Adrian was saying.
“East Prussia is a long way off,” Hugo pointed out. “Would you get there in time?”
“I doubt it,” said Adrian quickly. “I doubt it. That’s the difficulty. I doubt if it’s possible.”
Solange suddenly put her head over the banisters and said:
“Oh, I think it is. If you start to-night, or very early to morrow morning. There’s a Continental Bradshaw in the library. I’ll look out the trains for you if you like.”
Adrian started and blenched. He had not meant to commit himself to more than a pious hope of being able to stand beside Paul Wrench’s grave. The journey would be tiresome and expensive. If he had known that Solange was within hearing he would have been less definite. An expressed intention was quite enough for the world in general and would cost much less than a railway ticket. Many people would be sure to believe that he had, actually, gone. But not Solange. Not his family. They would know exactly whether he had been or not.
“The funeral is on Wednesday,” she told them. “The paper says so. I’ll go and look up your trains.”
She skipped into the library and found the Continental Bradshaw. Ford helped her to find the place.
After a suspicious glance at Hugo, Adrian grew calmer. He doubted whether his discomfiture had been observed. The young man was in a brown study. His crossword puzzle had slipped to the floor and he looked as if he was listening to something.
“What are you going to do this morning?” asked Adrian, changing the subject.
Hugo ought to have spread the news that he was going to read his play to Aggie. But he had forgotten that. He was thinking that he had made enough money to live on for the rest of his life, and there was really no reason why he should not go and live in a coastguard’s cottage and write poetry? Except that he would hate to live in a coastguard’s cottage. The poetry, not the cottage, was the important part of it, and he could write that just as well in the Grosvenor Hotel, if he wrote it at all. What sort of poetry? he asked himself. And why did the memory of a tossed row of tamarisks make him want to write it? What magic lay in the scratch of sand on oilcloth? Because they belonged to the Other Life. The significance was not to be sought in the subject, but in himself.
“It’s gone,” he thought gloomily. “It’s gone.”
Still, he could write poetry if he liked. It was not very difficult. He believed that he could be a successful poet as well as a successful playwright, if it were not for those moments when the train, flashing out of the tunnel, upset him. In the one career he had already gone as far as anyone could go, and perhaps it was time that he should try his powers in some other direction. He turned round and said to Adrian:
“There’s something that I very much want you to do for me, if it isn’t too much to ask. The fact is … I wish you’d read some things … some … some of my poems … and give me your candid opinion …”
Adrian was charmed. He liked encouraging young poets better than anything in the world.
Now I shall have to hurry up and write them, thought Hugo. He was for it now. It was strange how quickly these decisions were made. Now he was a poet, and his publicity was already prancing ahead of him.
“But my dear young friend, I didn’t know that you … er …” Adrian made passes in the air, “perpetrated … these excesses …”
Hugo did not explain that he had perpetrated nothing yet. When the first idea for a new play occurred to him, it was always his habit to outline it to a sympathetic friend, before ever he set pen to paper. He fell into his new rôle delightfully. He blushed and was diffident and seemed to forget that he had three plays running at once in West-End theatres. Between them they had dug the foundation of his new career before Solange put her head out of the library.
“Is your passport visa’d for Germany?” she asked Adrian.
Adrian said hopefully that he did not think it was.
“Well then, you’ll have to get it done to-morrow morning. You can catch the later boat train. I’ll show you …”
She vanished into the library again and Adrian thought it best to escape before she could show him. Muttering something about the golf links he hurried upstairs. The church bells of Ullmer burst into a clamorous peal for matins, and a car for the golfers came purring up to the front door.
Presently Lady Geraldine came downstairs, putting on her gloves. Pausing in the hall, she slowly took them off and went up again. Alec came out of the drawing-room and went into the library. Adrian scuttled downstairs and got quickly into the car. Lady Geraldine reappeared unexpectedly from the baize service door carrying some string and brown paper. She went out on to the terrace and called for Marianne. Laura and Philomena came down the stairs and asked if there was to be a collection. Walter Bechstrader came out of the library and fell over one of the dogs. Corny rushed upstairs in a great hurry. Gibbie came and stood in the hall and tapped the barometer. The car in the drive turned off its engine. Adrian, tired of waiting, got out of it. The bells changed to another chime.
From the library came the strains of a gramophone. Ford and Solange were putting on quartettes. Lady Geraldine came in from the garden to remark, without much perturbation, that every one was going to be late for church. At last Alec, Adrian and Gibbie, all meeting by chance in the hall, were induced to go out and get into the car, but they waited for a little while before they realised that nobody else was playing golf. The engine started again, and the noise of it died away down the drive. The bells changed to a single note.
The telephone rang. Ford dashed out of the library. But it was a message for Bechstrader and he went back to Solange. Somebody from the village appeared uncertainly at the front door with a note, and all the dogs began to bark at her, until Marianne, bounding across the hall, put a stop to it. Hugo could hear her courteously reassuring the flurried lady and promising to give the note to her grandmother. The competence and kindness of her manner puzzled him, for he had got it written down that she was shy. He must find out more about her, and some time, when everything was quieter, he would think with pleasure of her singing last night, and how it had made him feel like a ship at anchor. Instead of reading his play to Aggie, it would have been nice perhaps to go for a little walk with Marianne on the downs, and pick cowslips. ‘Marianne,’ he would say, ‘do you still like me?’ And she would be very much surprised. But in spite of her scarlet embarrassment he would succeed in learning that she did still like him very much.
The church bells had stopped. Three minutes later the party for matins had all assembled in the hall and were stepping casually out into the sunshine. The sound of their voices, their light laughter, Corny’s chirp, and Bechstrader’s gong, died away as the noise of the car had died away. Hugo was at last left to his crossword puzzle and the dawdling peace of a Sunday morning. On every side of him open doors and empty rooms gave promise of repose.
Flinging aside his paper, he went and stood at the garden door, looking out into a light that was already hot and blue. It was going to be another scorching day. The hills were hazy and far away, and the sun struck up from the stone terrace at his feet. But it was still morning. The noon siesta had not begun and though the world was tranquil it was wide awake. Bees swam heavily about among the flowers and from behind the brick wall, where the fruit would soon hang ripening, came cheerful farmyard duckings. A sense of warmth, pleasure and well-being streamed up from the earth to Hugo, who was cold, sick and overtasked. He shut his eyes against the sunlight and felt the heat and dazzle beat against his eyelids. But it would not penetrate to the chilly core of his body. Something inside him remained frozen, even when he opened his eyes again, and saw Aggie coming downstairs.