Thunder on the Left (1926)/Chapter 20
JANET was surprised to find that she had gone abroad during the night. She was puzzled until she noticed that where she lay she could see herself reflected in the dressing-table mirror, which was tilted forward a little. The shoehorn, that held it at the proper angle for Mother's hair, had slipped down. So the whole area of the big bed was visible in the glass, and the mounded hill of white blanket that must be Mother. Under the snug tent of bedclothes Janet could feel the radiating warmth coming from behind her. She experimented a little, edging softly closer to see how near she could get to that large heat without actually touching it. How warm grown-up people's bodies are!
The curtains rippled inward in the cool morning air. The light was very grey, not yellow as it ought to be on the morning of a picnic. Her clothes were on the floor beside the bed. Clothes look lonely with nobody in them. She watched herself in the glass, opening her mouth and holding up her hand to see the reflection do the same thing. Then the clock downstairs struck seven, and she felt it safe to slip out. In the glass she saw the blankets open, a pair of legs grope outward. Cautiously, not to rouse Mother, she picked up her clothes and got to the door. As she turned the knob one shoe fell with a thump. She looked anxiously at the rounded hill. It stirred ominously, but said nothing.
Sylvia, with sheets and blankets trailing from her, lay like a bundle of laundry on the window seat. Janet woke her, they sat dressing and babbling together, now and then shouting along the passage to Rose, who slept with Nounou. Rose kept opening the nursery door to ask what they said, then, while the remark was being repeated, Nounou's voice would command her to shut it. Janet, with brown knees hunched under her chin, picked at shoelace knots. Sylvia, in her deliberate way, was planning this time to get her shirt on right side forward. She announced several times her intention of drinking plenty of ginger ale at the Picnic, because peanut butter sandwiches make you so thirsty. She kept saying this in the hope of learning, from Janet's comment, whether milk has to be drunk at Picnics. Janet did not contradict her, so Sylvia felt that the ginger ale was a probability.
Ruth, lying in a delicious morning drowse, rather enjoyed their clatter, as one does enjoy the responsibilities of others. Refreshed by long slumber, she relished the seven-o'clock-in-the-morning feeling of a house with children in it. A sharp rumour of bacon and coffee came tingling up the back stairs. She lazily reckoned the number of people who would be using the bathroom. It would be a good plan to get ahead of the traffic. But while she was trying to make the decision she heard the children hailing George. He said something about not leaning out of the windows without any clothes on. "We're trying to see if there are cobwebs on the lawn, when there's cobwebs it's not going to rain." Then his steps moved along the corridor. She relapsed into her warm soothing sprawl. Besides, it's always a nuisance to get down too early and have to wait about for breakfast. She liked to arrive just when the coffee was coming fresh onto the table.
She looked forward to an entertaining day. Nothing is more amusing than one's friends in the knot of absurd circumstance. She had been afraid of Joyce; but certainly last night the girl had made a fool of herself. And Phyllis, the cool and lovely Phyllis, usually so sure, she too would be on the defensive. The life of women like Ruth sometimes appears a vast campaign of stealth. They move like Guy Fawkes conspirators in the undervaults of society, planting ineffective petards in one another's cellars.
She enjoyed herself trying to foresee what Phyllis's strategy would be. I think I'll take pains to be rather nice to Mr. Martin. In spite of his simplicity there's something dangerous about him. It would be fun to allay his suspicions and then, when she got him in clear profile against the sky, shoot him down without mercy. She felt an agreeable sensation of being on the strong side; of having underneath her the solid conventions and technicalities of life—as comfortable and reassuringly supportive as the warm bed itself. Not a very lucky analogy, perhaps: she looked over at Ben, who was still asleep on the floor. He looked pathetic beside the collapsed bed frames, his dejected feet protruding at the end of the mattress. But that was the satisfying thing about Ben: he was conquered and beaten. He would never surprise her with any wild folly. Urbane, docile, enduring, he knew his place. Properly wedged into his seat in the middle of the row, he would never trample on people's toes to reach the aisle between the acts. The great fife and drum corps might racket all around him, he would scarcely hear it. There was cotton in his ears. Any resolute woman, she reflected sagely, even without children to help her, can drill a man into insensibility.
George allowed the bath water to splash noisily while he cleaned his teeth, but he always turned off the tap while shaving. He shaved by ear as much as by sight or touch. Unless he could hear the crackling stroke of the razor blade he was not satisfied that it was cutting properly.
"How soon do you think the Pony will come?" Janet had asked him as he came upstairs. The children had found some deceptive promotion scheme advertised in a cheap magazine of Nounou's. The notice had led them to believe that if they solved a very transparent puzzle they would easily win the First Prize, a Shetland pony. They had answered the puzzle and now were waiting daily to hear the patter of hoofs up the lane. To George's dismay he had found that they took this very seriously. They had swept out an old stall in the stable and ravished a blanket from Rose's bed to keep Prince (whose name and photograph had appeared in the advertisement) from being cold at night. He had tried, gently, to caution them, explaining that the original puzzle had only been preliminary lure for some subscription-getting contest. Undismayed they had badgered Lizzie, the ice man, and a couple of neighbours into signing up at twenty-five cents each. They paid no heed to his temperate warnings that it would be impossible to get many subscriptions for so plebeian a journal. He wondered how he would ever be able to disillusion them.
The razor paused and he stared at his half-lathered face in the glass as he realized the nice parallel. Isn't it exactly what Nature is always doing to us? Promising us a Pony! The Pony of wealth, fame, satisfied desire, contentment, if we just sign on the dotted line. . . . Obey that Impulse. By Heaven, what a Promotion Scheme she has, the old jade! Had his sorry dreams been any wiser than those of Janet and Sylvia? His absurd vision of being an artist in living, of knowing the glamour and passion of some generous fruitful career, of piercing into the stormy darkness that lies beyond the pebbly shallows of to-day—all risible! Life is defeat. Hide, hide the things you know to be true. Fall back into the genial humdrum. Fill yourself with sleep. It's all a Promotion Scheme. . . . And inside these wary counsels something central and unarguable was crying: It wasn't just a Pony. It was the horse with wings.
The great Promotion Scheme, the crude and adorable artifice! How many infatuated subscribers it has lured in, even persuaded them to renew after they had found the magazine rather dull reading. In the course of another million years would it still be the same, man and woman consoling and thwarting one another in their study of the careless hints of Law? He could see the full stream of life, two intervolved and struggling currents endlessly mocking and yearning to one another, hungry and afraid. Clear and lucent in sunlit reaches, troubled and swift over stony stairs, coiled together in dreaming eddies, swinging apart in frills of foam. Sweet immortal current, down and down to the unknown sea. Who has not thrilled to it, craved it, cursed it, invented religions out of it, made it fetich or taboo, seen in its pure crystal the mirror of his own austere or swinish face. Turn from it in horror, or muddy it with heavy feet, this cruel water is troubled by angels and mirrors the blind face of God. Blessings on those who never knew it, children and happy ghosts.
George ran his fingers over his glossy chin. He looked solemn recognition at the queer fellow in the glass, and mused that it's only people who haven't had something they wanted who take the trouble to think confused and beautiful thoughts. But he heard a cautious hand trying the knob. Even thinking about God is no excuse for keeping others out of the bathroom. He laughed aloud, a peal of perfect self-mockery, and splashed hastily into the cold water. Martin, waiting to get in, heard him and wondered. Usually it is only gods or devils who are merry by themselves. Among human beings it takes two to make a laugh.
"Why were you laughing?" he asked, opening his door when he heard George leave the bathroom.
George paid no attention. He was hurrying to tell Phyllis his thoughts before they escaped. Who but she would have endured his absurdities? If she had had hallucinations of her own, that only brought them closer together. Out of these ashes they could rebuild their truth. Love means nothing until you fall into it all over again.
She was sitting on the edge of the bed, by the window, nervously picking the nails of one hand with the forefinger of the other. This habit, which he detested, almost broke his enthusiasm. He had a grotesque desire to tell her that he would forgive her even that. I guess I really do love her enormously, he thought, or the little things she does wouldn't madden me so. Exasperated with sudden tenderness, he had somehow expected her to meet him with equal affection. But she just sat there, looking down at her hands. He took them, to stop the hated gesture. The bantam over the hill repeated his rollicking sharp salute, which would have been an epigram if he had uttered it only once.
"I wish you could stop that rooster," she said. "Over and over again, the same identical squawk. I wouldn't mind so much if he wasn't a bantam. It makes it seem so silly, somehow. He goes out under those great tall pine trees and shouts at them."
He smiled and turned her face toward him. She looked pitiably tired. He knew how she would look when she was old.
"Perhaps he's rather like me," he said.
"There was one here that crowed just like that when we were children. The same note exactly."
"It's heredity. Probably this is his great-great-great-great-grand-egg."
She reached under the pillow, pulled out the little flattened handkerchief, and stood up.
"I must hurry. I'd give anything if to-day were over. I suppose life is like this, just day after day."
"Give me that," he said, taking the handkerchief. "I've seen it before."
"No, you haven't," she said, still in the same dull tone. "It's a new one."
"Yes, I have. Last night."
"Last night?"
"Yes, under your pillow."
"You?"
She stared, her face quivering. Suddenly the line of her mouth seemed to collapse and run downward. Something tight had broken, something proud and fierce had bent. She was crying.
"Oh, Geordie, life is so much queerer than I ever knew. Why didn't you tell me? I had such beastly dreams. I wish I could die."
The old name recalled one of his own for her.
"Leopard, Leopard . . . you silly little half-tamed leopard. What do I care about your dreams? It'll all be all right in the morning."
"It is the morning, and it isn't all right. You take them for the Picnic, let me stay at home. I won't see Mr. Martin. Take him away. He's so like you, Geordie, but with all your beastliness left out. Your nice beastliness, your dear beastliness, everything that makes me hate and adore you."
"Now, listen. I've got a great idea. I didn't half take my bath, I was so keen to tell it to you. Let's get married."
She looked at him in such quaint misery, her face all wrinkled and slippery with tears, he was almost angry again.
"Damn it, I mean really married. The first time doesn't count, it's only a Promotion Scheme, your genial old prayer book admits it. But the Bible says it's better to marry than to burn, doesn't it?"
"Let's do both."
(Why, he thought, she's got almost as much sense as Joyce.)
"That's the way to talk," he said. "Because I'd much rather marry a woman with a sense of humour. All right, we'll pretend we've been living in sin, and now I'm going to make an honest woman of you. Wilt thou, Phyllis, have this man to thy wedded husband"
"We have been living in sin. It's sin to be unhappy and hateful."
"Of course it is. And if either of you know any impediment Where's that prayer book of yours? I love that marriage—service stuff so much, it'd be worth while to get spliced every now and then just to hear it. It's so gorgeously earthy. Remember that bit where as soon as he's tied 'em up the parson has misgivings, and sings out in alarm 'O Lord, save thy servant and thy handmaid!'"
"No, don't read me the prayer book now, I can't stand it. I want to get my bath."
"Run along then." He threw her blue robe around her shoulders. "We've got to go through with the Picnic, for the children's sake. We'll make it the happiest day in the world."
"You don't think it's too late?"
He watched her down the passage, and then stood by the window seat looking out. The morning was very moist, there was fog over the bay, the hall had a faint musty odour like damp wallpaper. Certainly it was going to rain. Never mind, it would be one of those steady drumming rains that make a house so cosy. He was surprised to see that Joyce was in the garden already, she had set up her easel near the tea table and was painting. No, he thought, I shan't let her go: we can all be happy together. If Phyl knew how much she owes to Joyce she'd fall at her feet. How wise women would be if they knew that a man who has only loved one has never loved any. But better not mention it. Who wants them to be wise, poor . . . half-tamed leopards!
"There's someone in the bathroom," Phyllis said, coming back.
"Martin, probably."
"No, it's Ruth. I can smell her all down the passage. That mignonette she uses. Funny how sharp one's nose is in damp weather."
"If we ever come here again we'll have the house repapered."
She knelt on the seat beside him.
"Don't let's come again."
Her look followed his into the quiet garden. Both were silent. George guessed well enough why Joyce was there. She was doing a sketch for him, something to leave him. In that little figure at the easel was all the honour and disaster of all the world.
Side by side, his arm about her, he and Phyllis looked down into the cool green refreshment of birdsong and dew. The light was filled with a sense of mist, too thin to be seen, but sunshine was incapable behind it. Filmy air globed them in, as the glimmering soap-bubble spheres a breath of the soap's perfume. A dream, a fog stained with dim colour, a bubble of glamour, farce, and despair; all the sane comfortable words are no more than wind. One gush of violets rebuts them. Life is too great for those who live it. Purposely they wound and mar it, to bring it to their own tragic dimension. What was Joyce's word? . . . Inadequate. Yes, not all the beauty of the world can allay the bitter disproportion. And Time will come to rob us even of this precious grievance, this pang we carry in our dusty knapsack like the marshal's silver baton. And Time will come and take my lust away. . . .
So learn to live on farce. To savour its venom, like the Eastern King, dose and larger dose, until one can relish and thrive on a diet of acid that would blast the normal heart. Isn't it this very disproportion that makes the glory? There would be no laughter in a perfect world. Ever after, digesting his secret poison, he would search other faces too for the sign of that healing bane.
He felt that Phyllis was about to say something. He erased his mind, to be ready to receive her thought; as one parent holds out arms to take the baby from the other.
"I think she's rather wonderful. I think I could . . ."
Joy and clean gusto, the blessed hilarity of living! Why, it was so divinely simple, if Phyl would care to understand. . . .
"Dearest, if you . . . if you only . . ."
The half-tamed leopard stirred and showed a yellow spark. George's mind, uneasily changing itself, made swift cusping arcs like the tracks of a turning car. Ruth came rustling from the bathroom. She was amazed to see them doing a foxtrot together.
"Good-morning!" he said. "Perhaps you didn't know, this is our wedding day."
"Hurry up," he whispered to Phyllis. "Grab the bath while you can. I'll get dressed, I'll just have time to mend that railing before breakfast."