Thunder on the Left (1925)/Chapter 19
JOYCE lay in a trance of weariness. A nervous tremolo shivered up and down from her knees to her stomach; her spirit HEseemed lost and dragged under into the strange circling life of the body, stubborn as that of a tree, that goes on regardless of the mind. I don't care, she thought, I'm glad I'm alive. She was too inert to close her hot eyes or turn over into the pillow to shut out sounds from her sharpened ears. She heard George's step on the garden path, Phyllis come downstairs and go to the kitchen. Beneath everything else was the obbligato of the house itself; twinges of loose timbers, the gurgle and rush of plumbing, creak of beds, murmuring voices, soft shut of doors. Tenacious life reluctantly yielding itself to oblivion. Then into this fading recessional came the low sough in the pines, the slackening volleys of the crickets like a besieging army that had withdrawn its troops. And the far-away cry of a train. She imagined it, trailing panes of golden light along the shore, or perhaps darkly curtained sleeping cars partitioned into narrow kennels where mysterious people lay alone: and the bursting silver plume of its whistle, spirting into the cool night, tearing a jagged rent in silence, shaking the whole membrane of elastic air that enveloped them all, a vibration that came undulating over the glittering bay, over the lonely beaches, trembled beside her and went throbbing away. . . . She hadn't been down to the beach yet, past the rolling dunes that gave her childhood a first sense of fatal solitude. She tried to remember how that shore looked: wideness, sharp air, the exact curved triangle of sails leaning into unseen sweetness of breeze, steep slides of sand over-tufted above by toppling clumps of grass. If one could escape down there and go bathing in moonlight; come back cleansed, triumphant.
The whisper at the window sill startled her. She knew Bunny at once.
"You must get him away. Before it's too late, before he knows."
Joyce understood perfectly; so perfectly it didn't seem necessary to say anything. This was just what she had been telling herself.
She nodded.
"I kept calling him while you were all in the living room. I was here at this window. He won't listen. He thinks I'm just teasing him."
Joyce remembered Martin closing the door.
"Then I called you. I was so afraid you wouldn't hear me. It's awful to be helpless."
"Bunny, you're not helpless. Tell me what to do."
"What room is he in?"
"I don't know. Yes, I do, I think it's at the end of the passage, next the bath."
"The old nursery. Oh, if I could come indoors. I can't; they've forgotten me."
"We'll manage," Joyce whispered. "I always knew you and I would have to help each other."
"He must find something to take him back. You are the one who can help."
Joyce knew there was some secret here too beautiful to be said. Bunny could not tell her, it must be guessed.
"Is it something I gave him?"
"Something you'd like to keep."
"Is it the mouse? Bunny, how can we find it? That was a lifetime ago."
"Perhaps it's in the nursery. In the old toy cupboard."
"I'll get it in the morning."
"That may be too late. Now, to-night."
"Oh Bunny, tell me plainly. Is it the mouse you mean?"
She was tugging fiercely to raise the screen, jammed in its grooves. Her fingers still tingled from the sharp edges of the shallow metal sockets. Only the empty garden, the sinking candy-peel moon beyond the black arc of hill.
The impression was vivid upon her. There was only one thing to do, she must go through the sleeping house to Martin's room, rouse him, tell him at once. She rose from bed and opened the door.
He was there, holding out his hand; motionless as though he had been waiting so all the shining night. She took it mechanically.
"Who is it?" she said.
"Who else could it be?"
But at first she had thought it was Martin, somehow warned by Bunny. They stood aghast of one another, in silence, awkwardly holding hands. It was not like a meeting, it was like a good-bye.
The declining moonlight limned her cloudily. But this was no silly dream. He saw her revealed in all her wistful beauty, meant from the beginning for him.
"George, we must get Martin out of the house"
Martin again. Evidently, he thought, the gods intend to wring the last drop of comedy out of me.
"Damn Martin," he said softly. "Joyce, I didn't find you at last to talk about him. Dear, I told you we'd know it if the time came."
Was this what Bunny meant by giving? I have nothing to give. The Me he loves has gone somewhere. How can I tell him? Instead of the imagined joy and communion there's only horror. And I want so to love him.
He had carried her to the couch and was kneeling beside her. Oh, if I could lay down the burden of this heavy, heavy love. If I could love him gladly, not just bitterly. Is this the only way to save him from knowing? Such a little thing, that I wanted to keep for myself. She turned from him convulsively and buried her face in the pillow. He mustn't see my tears. The cruellest thing is he'll think I don't love him. No man was ever so loved. But I gave myself, long ago, to the dream of him. I can't mix it with the reality.
She turned, in a mercy of pure tenderness.
"George, dear George, I meant what I said."
I'll do whatever you tell me, I'll do whatever you tell me. But he divined her misery. The brave words trembled. She lay before him, white, inaccessible, afraid. Exquisite, made for delight with every grace that the brave lust of man has dreamed; and weariness, anxiety, some strange disease of the spirit, frustrated it. Their love too was a guest of honour, a god to be turned away. She lay there, her sweet body the very sign and symbol of their need, and he knew nothing but pity, as for a wounded child. In that strange moment his poor courage was worthy of hers. God pity me for a fool, he thought. But I love her best of all because I shall never have her.
"I'm going to tell you the truth," he began
A jarring crash shook the house, followed by a child's scream. He rose heavily to his feet, tightened and nauseated with terror. He knew exactly what must have happened. The railing on the sleeping porch, which he had forgotten to mend. One of the children had got out of bed, stumbled against it, the rotten posts had given way. If she had fallen from that height . . . he pictured a broken white figure on the gravel. This was his punishment for selfishness and folly. Oh, it is always the innocent who suffer.
With heaviness in his feet he hurried through the dining room and veranda. All was still: looking up he could see the balcony unaltered. Then, through the open windows above he heard the unmistakable clang of metal on a wooden floor. Ben's bed.
Unable to shake off his conviction of disaster he ran upstairs. Phyllis was crouching in the passage, comforting Janet. "I had a bad dream," the child sobbed, "then there was that awful noise."
"There, there, darling, you're all right now. We all have dreams sometimes. You can come into bed with Mother."
There was the bleat of one of the talking dolls. "Maaa-Maa!" it cried, and Sylvia appeared, sleepily stolid. "Is it to-morrow?" she asked.
"I thought the porch had broken down," said Phyllis hysterically. "George, did you fix that railing?"
"Nonsense. The porch is all right. Get back to sleep, little toads."
"What was it, Ben's bed?"
"Ben's! No such luck, it's mine," said Ruth, opening the door. "Where does the light turn on? I can't find the button." She saw George and gave a squeak of dismay.
She needn't be so damned skittish, he thought angrily. Nightgowns don't seem to be any novelty in this house. "Phyl, you take Janet into bed, I'll put Sylvia on the window seat. Keep them off that porch till I've mended the railing in the morning."
Ben was grumbling over the wreckage. "George, what's the secret of this thing? Lend a hand."
"I'm frightfully sorry," said George. "I ought to have warned you. Here, I can fix it, there's a bit of clothes line"
"For Heaven's sake, don't start tinkering now," said Ruth, who had dived into the other bed. "I'm all right here, and Ben can sleep on the mattress."
Her door was open, she stood anxiously waiting as he came downstairs at last. She had put on her wrapper, he noticed with a twinge.
"Ruth's bed had a blow-out," he said. "At least I thought she was safe when she's between the sheets." He felt that he ought to want to laugh, but he had no desire to. I suppose it's because I've got no sense of humour. "Mr. Martin seems the only one who knows that night is meant to forget things in. Well, let him sleep. He'll be on his way early in the morning."
She did not answer at once, searching for the words that would help him most.
"I must go too. George, you must let me. I'd only spoil your Picnic."
"You'll miss a lot of nice sandwiches," he said bitterly. "I made them myself, white meat."
With divine perception she saw the nature of his wound, the misery of his shame and self-abasement. It was not love of her he needed now, but love of himself, to keep life in him.
"We wouldn't have any chance to be us, we couldn't talk, we must say it now."
He remembered that once they had promised themselves they would never say it.
"It's better so, I suppose. Then there won't be even one sorrow that we haven't shared."
"Sorrow?" she said. "Let's call it joy. Dear, I shall always worship you as the bravest and most generous I have ever known. To do without things one can't have, what credit is that? But to do without what one might have had . . . George, let me try to get a little rest. I feel so ill."
He tucked her in and patted her shoulder.
"Good-night, dear," he said. "Don't worry. Everything will be all right in the morning. God bless you. . . . Don't forget any of the things I haven't told you."
She knew that this was as near being one of his Moments as he could be expected to manage. He had turned the corner, at least three of the Georges would live. And the Fourth—well, she had that one where nothing mortal now could blot or stain him. For ever.
"In the morning" . . . it was morning already. As he lay down on the couch he could feel, rather than see, the first dim fumes of day. The brief hush and interim was over, the pink moon had gone. The last of the crickets flung the password to the birds, treetops began to warble. A new link in the endless chain picked up the tension of life. Somewhere over the hillside a cock was crowing his brisk undoubting cheer.
So this was what they called victory. What was the saying? One more such victory. . . . Not even those last merciful words of hers could acquit him of his own damnation. All the irony, none of the bliss. The world hung about his neck like the Mariner's dead albatross. The charnel corpse clung to him, rotting, with bony skull and jellied festering eye. But even the Mariner was worthier, having killed the bird; he himself had only maimed it. There would not even be the sharp numbing surgery of good-bye. Endlessly, through long perspectives of pain, he could see themselves meeting, smiling and parting, to encounter once more round the next corner of memory and all the horror to be lived again. We're experienced in partings, he had said once.
The gradual summer dawn crept up the slopes of earth, brimmed and brightened, and tinctures of lavender stained the sweetened air. The hours when sleep is happiest, ere two and two have waked to find themselves four, and the birds pour the congested music of night out of their hearts. And the day drew near: the day when men are so reasonable, canny, and well-bred; when colour comes back to earth and beneficent weary necessities resume; the healthful humorous day, the fantastic day that men do well to take so seriously as it distracts them from their unappeasable desires. With an unheard buzz of cylinders the farmer's flivver twirled up the back lane and brought the morning milk.