NOW it was dusk: dusk that takes away the sins of the world. Under that soft cone of shadow, wagged like a dunce cap among the stars, are folly and glamour and despair; but no sin. The day was going back to the pure darkness where all things began; to the nothing from which it had come; to the unconsciousness that had surrounded it. The long, long day had orbed itself to a whole. Its plot and scheme were perfect; its crises and suspenses artfully ordered; now darkness framed it and memory gave it grace. Tented over by upward and downward light, mocked by tinsel colours and impossible desires, another cunning microcosm was complete.
"I like your orchestra," said Joyce. They were all sitting on the veranda steps. From the garden and the dunes beyond came the rattling tremolo of summer insect choirs.
No one spoke for a moment. Phyllis was enjoying a relaxation after the effort of the dinner table. It was no longer necessary to think, every instant, of something to say. Darkness takes the place of conversation. It replies to everything. Like fluid privacy the shadow rose and flowed restfully about them; faces were exempt from scrutiny; eyes, those timid escapers from question, could look abroad at ease. Reprieved from angers and anxieties, the mind yearned to come home under the roof of its little safe identity. It had not forgotten the distractions that make life hard: quarrels, the income tax, unanswered letters, toothache: but these hung for a moment, merely a pretty sparkle of fireflies. I feel as though I were really Me, Phyllis thought. I wish there were someone to hold my hand.
I wonder if I do like it? Joyce thought as soon as she heard her own voice.
Come home, come home to yourself, cried the incessant voice of darkness. The soulless musicians of earth fiddled with horrid ironic gusto. Nothing is true but desire, they wailed and wheedled. Now they were fierce piccolo and pibroch; now they had the itinerant rhythm of bawdy limericks.
Special intensity of silence seemed to emanate from Ben and Ruth, who sat close together on the top step. In the general pause theirs was like a hard core: it was not true silence but only repressed speech. The smell of Ben's cigar floated among the group like an argument. It had a sensible, civilized, matter-of-fact, downtown fragrance. It seemed to suggest that someone—even the crickets, perhaps—should put down a proposition in black and white. Joyce had a feeling that Ben and Ruth were waiting for any one to say anything; and that when it was said they would jointly subject it to careful businesslike scrutiny. Contents noted, and in reply would say
"Orchestra?" repeated Ben, in a puzzled voice.
"The crickets." (She tried not to make it sound like an explanation.) "I'd forgotten that nights on the Island were like this."
Martin was sitting just below her. He had been playing with the pebbles on the path, picking them up and dropping them. He turned and looked up at her.
"Like what?" he asked.
She had the same sensation of disbelief she had felt at the dinner table. One must be strangely innocent or strangely reckless to ask questions like that. George's face shone in the flare of a match: he looked emptily solemn and pensive as men always do while lighting a pipe. Joyce felt almost as though there were a kind of conspiracy against her to make her take the lead in talking.
"They fiddle away as though it was the most important night that ever happened," she said, a little nervously. "As though they think it's a First Night and the reviewers are here from the newspapers."
"It is the most important night that ever happened," said Phyllis slowly. "It's now." There was a queer frightened tremble in her voice.
"There'll be a moon a little later," said George. He said it rather as though this would be creditable to him, as host.
"No, George, don't let there be a moon. Not everything at once, it's too much."
Something in George's outline showed that he thought Phyllis was merely chaffing him; but Joyce was more clairvoyant. For the first time she became aware of some reality in Phyllis: saw that she was more than just George's wife. There was in her some buried treasure that no one had ever taken the trouble to hunt for. Why, she's lovely, Joyce thought. In a sudden impulse she wanted to take Phyllis's hand; her own fluttered liftingly in her lap; she restrained it, for she felt that she would want to kiss George before very long and it didn't seem quite square to be in love with a man and his wife simultaneously. It would be extravagant, she supposed sadly.
"We don't need a moon," she said, "with Mrs. Granville wearing that lovely silver dress."
"It makes me feel as though we ought to do something special," said Martin.
"We can have a game of Truth," suggested George.
No one showed much enthusiasm except Martin, who wanted to know how it was played.
"Everyone must tell some thought he has had but didn't say."
Ben and Ruth felt more certain than ever that the evening was going to be a failure.
"A thought you've had ever?" asked Martin.
"No, this evening."
"You suggested it, George; you can go first," said Ruth.
"Ruth evidently believes that unspoken thoughts are always terrible."
"They can't be much more terrible than some of the things that were said at dinner," Ruth retorted.
"In this game you don't get to the really interesting stuff until after several rounds, when people get warmed up. I'll begin with a very small one. I was thinking that I mustn't forget to put away the car.—Now Ruth, what's yours?"
"That Miss Clyde probably has a very becoming bathing suit."
"I was thinking I heard one of the children calling," said Phyllis. "But it wasn't, it was only a singing in my nose."
"What a funny nose," said Martin.
"Don't you know how something seems to get caught in your nostril and makes a kind of singing when you breathe?"
Ben had had time to make a careful choice of the least damning of his meditations. "I was thinking that the crickets don't really sound like an orchestra. They're more like adding machines."
"Why, that's true," George exclaimed. "They have just that even, monotonous, cranking sound. Adding up some impossible and monstrous total. Counting the stars, maybe."
"I hope you won't think my thought is rude," said Joyce. "It struck me that if it weren't for Mr. Brook's cigar I'd be convinced this is all a dream.—I don't mean it isn't a nice cigar, just that it smells so worldly."
"Well, our secret thoughts all seem fairly innocent. But we haven't heard yours yet, Mr. Martin."
"I don't think this is a very interesting game," said Martin.
George insisted. "Come, the guest of honour can't escape as easily as that. Out with it!"
"Do I have to?" Martin appealed to Phyllis. She came out of her reverie, aware that even darkness is inadequate as a sedative. The threads of relationship among them all had tightened.
"I know what Mr. Martin's trouble is," said Ruth. "He says everything he thinks, so naturally he has nothing left."
"Why, that's just it," Martin said. "How did you know? What would be the good of thinking things and not saying them?"
"You're not playing fair," George objected. "No one would be crazy enough to say everything. Besides, there wouldn't be time."
Martin was stubbornly silent.
"I agree with Mr. Martin," Phyllis said. "It's not a very cheerful game. If we didn't say our thoughts we must have had some good reason for keeping them silent. Besides, I must speak to Lizzie about breakfast."
"I'll take the car to the stable."
"Can I go with you?" Martin asked.
George had still cherished a forlorn hope that the world was large enough for him and Joyce to have a few moments alone. For several days the stable had been sanctified in his anticipation. In the hayloft above the old disused stalls there was a big doorway that opened toward the sea. That mustily fragrant place was his favourite retreat when solitude seemed urgent. There, he had thought, he and Joyce could talk. He had even put an old steamer rug on the hay so they might sit more comfortably. There would be moonlight over the water. . . .
"Is it the same stable where we used to play as kids?" cried Ruth. "Oh, let's all go. I want to see it again. Why, that old haymow was the first place Ben ever kissed me."
"What did he do that for?" said Martin.
"Perhaps he'll do it again," said George bitterly. It was just like Ruth to ruin the stable for him.
"Well, I don't want to spoil any one else's plans," said Ben.
"We could play hide-and-seek in the hay," Martin suggested.
Now they were all piling into the car, to ride round the house to the stable. This was of a piece with the absurdity of everything else, George thought. People were always driving up in crowds to visit his secrets. Like sight-seeing busses loaded with excursionists. The world loves to trample over your private ecstasies and leave them littered with scraps of paper and banana peel. And this fellow Martin, with his cool mockery, was beginning to get on his nerves.
The engine leapt into life with the same eager alacrity as if they had been starting off for a long drive. Yes, the human objective means nothing to the routine of Nature. She looses her lightning indifferently, whether between the sooty termini of a spark plug or from charged cloud to earth. She squanders as much energy in a meadow of hallooing crickets as in a human spirit tormented by conflicting passions.
They made the circuit of the house. Down the drive from the front door to the main road, along the side of the house, then up the back lane by the kitchen and the circular bed of cannas. Only a hundred yards, but it seemed interminable because it was futile and meaningless. Something had gone wrong in his time sense. As the car passed the kitchen window he could see Phyllis talking to Lizzie, holding up a loaf of bread as she spoke. At the same moment Ruth was saying something about the moon coming up. His mind went off in a long curve. He felt a gush of anger at Phyllis because she had been so unaware of his feeling for Joyce. If she had been spiteful, or jealous, or suspicious, how much easier it would have been. Her pettiness would have driven him and Joyce blissfully into each other's arms, without the faintest sense of remorse. But this strangely detached Phyllis who seemed to move in a dream, instead of the familiar Phyllis of tempers and reproaches, was a different problem. Even sin, he thought furiously, is to be made as difficult as possible for me. And I had always imagined it would be so easy. Will God ever forgive me if I don't commit the sins I was intended to? God will get no praise from me, He's packed the house with a claque of crickets to put the show over. Through the window Phyllis's golden head shone in a haze of lamplight. As always, when angry at her he loved her most. When you love a woman, why make her life miserable by marrying her? Marriage demands too much. . . .
From this speculation he came back to find Ruth just finishing her sentence, the car still opposite the window, the loaf of bread still lifted in Phyllis's hand. It occurred to him that this evening was damnably like the slowed motion-pictures in which the stream of life is retarded into its component gestures. Now he was to have the embarrassment of witnessing the actual rhythm of living, the sluggish pattern that underlies gay human ritual, the grave airy dancing of creation treading softly its dark measure to unheard, undreamed music. The smallest alteration in the mind's pace changes everything, as some trifling misprint turns a commonplace newspaper headline into obscenity.
They drove into the stable.
"I miss the nice old horsey smell," said Ruth. "Too bad, it's only a garage now."
"Which was it you wanted to revive, the horsey smell or the embraces of Ben?" said George. "The loft hasn't changed much, I think."
He snapped on the light. While the others climbed the narrow little stair behind the old feed bins he filled the radiator with water and poured oil into the crank case. Morosely he heard their words overhead.
"Someone's left a blanket up here."
"Look, the bay's all full of moonlight. I didn't remember it was like that."
"We were children then, we didn't know about the moon. We had to go to bed too early."
"The old swing's gone." (This was Mr. Martin's voice.)
"Why . . . how did you know? Yes, that's where it was, that beam. . . ."
I thought that lunatic had been here before, George said to himself. He seems to know his way about.
He started the motor again. He thought he had noticed a faint roughness in its turning. He listened attentively, marvelling at the strong, hurrying fidelity of those airy explosions. I know why this car has kept her youth, he thought. She hasn't had any proper care, but she's been loved. A soft throbby purring, with a sweet quavering rhythm; the sound of sliding, of revolving, of vapour evenly expelled. It was a consoling, normal kind of sound; complete in itself; it shut out the voices upstairs. A touch on the throttle and it rose to a growl of unused power, a shout of fierce unquestioning assent, not much different from defiance. The old barn rang. It was as if an officer of some colonial regiment called on his legions for a fatal exploit, and heard in their answering yell a voice of savagery that might turn against himself.
He switched the key; the sound slid off into a soft conclusive sigh. There was an almost human breath of frustration in it. He closed the hood, his mind too vague for thinking, and saw Joyce standing there.
"I thought Mr. and Mrs. Brook would like a moment of privacy," she whispered.
He had her in his arms. On her soft lips was all the bittersweet of their long separation, of their mirth together, of their absurd and precious passion, denied by men and ratified by crickets. It was the perfect embrace of those who are no longer children, who can sweeten the impossible by mocking it a little. The tingling triumph of social farce, undreamed by poor candid Nature—the first illicit kiss!
"I suppose," she said tremulously, "that this really is what they call a Guilty Passion."
"My dear, my dear. What a queer world, where one has to apologize for loving people."
As though down a long avenue of distance he saw her in the perspective of her life: an exquisite gallant figure going about her brave concerns: so small and resolute in her single struggle with the world, and coming to his arms at last. He knew then that poets have not lied; that fairy tales are true; that life is hunger, and for every emptiness caters its own just food. Her mind that he had loved was tangled up with a body. Chastity was probably a much overrated virtue. For her sake, if she desired it, he was willing to make the heroic effort which is necessary to yield to temptation.
He held her close, in silence. Austere resolutions slipped away like sand in an hour glass. For an instant his only thought was a silly satisfaction that she must reach so far upward to meet his lips. His mind taunted him for thinking this.
"Dear fool, dear damned fool," he said. "Yes, you're just as you should be: lips cool and eyelids warm. And as soft as I always imagined. Oh, it's not fair that any one should be so soft. Joyce, do you know why I had to have you here? It's just a year . . . you remember?"
"Yes. The day you were looking out of the window. How long it seems."
"We begin to feel like a nice old unmarried couple."
She laughed, her rare broken laugh.
"Oh, George, then it is really you. The Fourth you, I mean. I couldn't quite believe it."
Voices came down from the loft. First it was Martin:
. . . "That's what I like about her. She looks as if she's happy inside."
Then Ruth, with a scornful snicker:
"Happy? I dare say. Did you see the way she looked at George at the dinner table? That kind of woman's always happy with someone else's husband."
There was an inaudible murmur, then Ben's voice:
"It's a form of nervousness."
Joyce drew back from his arms. Her eyes were dark with horror.
"Oh . . ." she said with a sob. "Why are people so . . . so inadequate."
Ruth's little sneer, falling on them like a crystal spirt of poison, burned George's bare heart.
"Joyce, dear Joyce . . ." He put his hands on her shoulders. "I must tell you, I must. I've waited so long. Oh, it's so long since I've done anything I want to, I've forgotten how. Joyce, you don't know how I needed you. I was hungry, I was a beggar, you fed me with laughter and taught me how to suffer. You taught me how to love, yes, everything I love I love a thousand times better because I know you. God help me, I love even Phyllis better because of you. . . ."
With a gesture of pathos and despair she buried her face in his coat. They heard the others beginning to descend. To postpone for a few moments the necessity of speech, he turned wildly to the car and again started the engine. As Ruth appeared at the foot of the stairs, her mouth opening to say something, he speeded the motor to a roar.
"Oh, George," piped Ruth as they were walking back to the house. "I've left my scarf. I must have dropped it in the loft. Ben'll get it. Have you locked the barn?"
"No, we don't lock anything around here."
"You laugh at locksmiths," said Joyce.
"I'll go," George said. "I can find it easier than Ben. There's a flashlight in the car."
He walked back to the stable. A lemonade-coloured moon was swimming above the maple tree. He did not bother to get the torch but slipped up the stair, moving noiselessly on rubber soles. The scarf was lying just at the top, where the steps emerged into the old harness room. He was about to glance into the hayloft, to satisfy his sentimental vision of how it would have looked to him and Joyce, a cavern of country fragrance, a musk of dead summers still banked there in pourried mounds. He was halted, with a catch of breath, by murmuring voices. He peered round the doorpost. A slope of powdery moonlight carved a pale alley through the heavy shadow. On his rug, spread toward the open window, sat Nounou and Brady's man, ardently enlaced.
The whispering pair, engrossed in rudimentary endearment, were oblivious of all else. It amused him to reflect that they must have been hiding anxiously somewhere in the loft while the visitors palavered near them. A single cricket, embalmed in the hay, chirped sweet airy prosits—solitary lutanist (or prothalamist) of the occasion. George stood smitten by the vulgar irony. There was cruel farce and distemper in finding his own dear torment parodied in these terms of yokel dalliance. The parable was only too plain. This back-yard amour was as rich in Nature's eyes as the kingliest smoke-room story of the Old Testament. Nature, genial procuress, who impartially honours the breach and the observance.
With the crude humour of the small boy, never quite buried in any man, he emitted a loud groaning wail of mimic anguish. He thrilled with malicious mirth to see the horrified swains leap up in panic. He tiptoed stealthily away, leaving them aghast.
This has got to end, he said to himself.