Fraternity

An approaching motor-car brought a startled frown across her brow. Was it ‘that person’? But though it was not Mr. Purcey and his A.i. Damyer, it was somebody so like him as made no difference. Thyme uttered a little laugh.

In the Park a cool light danced and glittered on the trees and water, and the same cool, dancing glitter seemed lighting the girl’s eyes.

The cabman, unseen, took an admiring look at her. ‘Nice little bit, this!’ it said.

‘Grandfather bathes here,’ thought Thyme. ‘Poor darling! I pity everyone that’s old.’

The cab passed on under the shade of trees out into the road.

‘I wonder if we have only one self in us,’ thought Thyme. ‘I sometimes feel that I have two – Uncle Hilary would understand what I mean. The pavements are beginning to smell horrid already, and it’s only June to-morrow. Will mother feel my going very much? How glorious if one didn’t feel!’

The cab turned into a narrow street of little shops.

‘It must be dreadful to have to serve in a small shop. What millions of people there are in the world! Can anything be of any use? Martin says what matters is to do one’s job; but what is one’s job?’

The cab emerged into a broad, quiet square.

‘But I’m not going to think of anything,’ thought Thyme; ‘that’s fatal. Suppose father stops my allowance; I should have to earn my living as a typist, or something of that sort; but he won’t, when he sees I mean it. Besides, mother wouldn’t let him.’

The cab entered the Euston Road, and again the cabman’s broad face was turned towards Thyme with an inquiring stare.

‘What a hateful road!’ Thyme thought. ‘What dull, ugly, common-looking faces all the people seem to have in London! as if they didn’t care for anything but just to get through their day somehow. I’ve only seen two really pretty faces!’

The cab stopped before a small tobacconist’s on the south side of the road.

‘Have I got to live here?’ thought Thyme.

Through the open door a narrow passage led to a narrow staircase covered with oilcloth. She raised her bicycle and wheeled it in. A Jewish-looking youth emerging from the shop accosted her.

“Your gentleman friend says you are to stay in your rooms, please, until he comes.”

His warm red-brown eyes dwelt on her lovingly. “Shall I take your luggage up, miss?”

“Thank you; I can manage.”

“It’s the first floor,” said the young man.

The little rooms which Thyme entered were stuffy, clean, and neat. Putting her trunk down in her bedroom, which looked out on a bare yard, she went into the sitting-room and threw the window up. Down below the cabman and tobacconist were engaged in conversation. Thyme caught the expression on their faces – a sort of leering curiosity.

‘How disgusting and horrible men are!’ she thought, moodily staring at the traffic. All seemed so grim, so inextricable, and vast, out there in the grey heat and hurry, as though some monstrous devil were sporting with a monstrous ant-heap. The reek of petrol and of dung rose to her nostrils. It was so terribly big and hopeless; it was so ugly! ‘I shall never do anything,’ thought Thyme-'never – never! Why doesn’t Martin come?’

She went into her bedroom and opened her valise. With the scent of lavender that came from it, there sprang up a vision of her white bedroom at home, and the trees of the green garden and the blackbirds on the grass.

The sound of footsteps on the stairs brought her back into the sitting-room. Martin was standing in the doorway.

Thyme ran towards him, but stopped abruptly. “I’ve come, you see. What made you choose this place?”

“I’m next door but two; and there’s a girl here – one of us. She’ll show you the ropes.”

“Is she a lady?”

Martin raised his shoulders. “She is what is called a lady,” he said; “but she’s the right sort, all the same. Nothing will stop her.”

At this proclamation of supreme virtue, the look on Thyme’s face was very queer. ‘You don’t trust me,’ it seemed to say, ‘and you trust that girl. You put me here for her to watch over me!..’

“I ‘want to send this telegram,” she said

Martin read the telegram. “You oughtn’t to have funked telling your mother what you meant to do.”

Thyme crimsoned. “I’m not cold-blooded, like you.”

“This is a big matter,” said Martin. “I told you that you had no business to come at all if you couldn’t look it squarely in the face.”

“If you want me to stay you had better be more decent to me, Martin.”

“It must be your own affair,” said Martin.

Thyme stood at the window, biting her lips to keep the tears back from her eyes. A very pleasant voice behind her said: “I do think it’s so splendid of you to come!”

A girl in grey was standing there – thin, delicate, rather plain, with a nose ever so little to one side, lips faintly smiling, and large, shining, greenish eyes.

“I am Mary Daunt. I live above you. Have you had some tea?”

In the gentle question of this girl with the faintly smiling lips and shining eyes Thyme fancied that she detected mockery.

“Yes, thanks. I want to be shown what my work’s to be, at once, please.”

The grey girl looked at Martin.

“Oh! Won’t to-morrow do for all that sort of thing? I’m sure you must be tired. Mr. Stone, do make her rest!”

Martin’s glance seemed to say: ‘Please leave your femininities!’

“If you mean business, your work will be the same as hers,” he said; “you’re not qualified. All you can do will be visiting, noting the state of the houses and the condition of the children.”

The girl in grey said gently: “You see, we only deal with sanitation and the children. It seems hard on the grown people and the old to leave them out; but there’s sure to be so much less money than we want, so that it must all go towards the future.”

There was a silence. The girl with the shining eyes added softly: “1950!”

“1950!” repeated Martin. It seemed to be some formula of faith.

“I must send this telegram!” muttered Thyme.

Martin took it from her and went out.

Left alone in the little room, the two girls did not at first speak. The girl in grey was watching Thyme half timidly, as if she could not tell what to make of this young creature who looked so charming, and kept shooting such distrustful glances.

“I think it’s so awfully sweet of you to come,” she said at last. “I know what a good time you have at home; your cousin’s often told me. Don’t you think he’s splendid?”

To that question Thyme made no answer.

“Isn’t this work horrid,” she said – “prying into people’s houses?”

The grey girl smiled. “It is rather awful sometimes. I’ve been at it six months now. You get used to it. I’ve had all the worst things said to me by now, I should think.”

Thyme shuddered.

“You see,” said the grey girl’s faintly smiling lips, “you soon get the feeling of having to go through with it. We all realise it’s got to be done, of course. Your cousin’s one of the best of us; nothing seems to put him out. He has such a nice sort of scornful kindness. I’d rather work with him than anyone.”

She looked past her new associate into that world outside, where the sky seemed all wires and yellow heat-dust. She did not notice Thyme appraising her from head to foot, with a stare hostile and jealous, but pathetic, too, as though confessing that this girl was her superior.

“I’m sure I can’t do that work!” she said suddenly.

The grey girl smiled. “Oh, I thought that at first.” Then, with an admiring look: “But I do think it’s rather a shame for you, you’re so pretty. Perhaps they’d put you on to tabulation work, though that’s awfully dull. We’ll ask your cousin.”

“No; I’ll do the whole or nothing.”

“Well,” said the grey girl, “I’ve got one house left to-day. Would you like to come and see the sort of thing?”

She took a small notebook from a side pocket in her skirt.

“I can’t get on without a pocket. You must have something that you can’t leave behind. I left four little bags and two dozen handkerchiefs in five weeks before I came back to pockets. It’s rather a horrid house, I’m afraid!”

“I shall be all right,” said Thyme shortly.

In the shop doorway the young tobacconist was taking the evening air. He greeted them with his polite but constitutionally leering smile.

“Good-evening, mith,” he said; “nithe evening!”

“He’s rather an awful little man,” the grey girl said when they had achieved the crossing of the street; “but he’s got quite a nice sense of humour.”

“Ah!” said Thyme.

They had turned into a by-street, and stopped before a house which had obviously seen better days. Its windows were cracked, its doors unpainted, and down in the basement could be seen a pile of rags, an evil-looking man seated by it, and a blazing fire. Thyme felt a little gulping sensation. There was a putrid scent as of burning refuse. She looked at her companion. The grey girl was consulting her notebook, with a faint smile on her lips. And in Thyme’s heart rose a feeling almost of hatred for this girl, who was so business-like in the presence of such sights and scents.

The door was opened by a young red-faced woman, who looked as if she had been asleep.

The grey girl screwed up her shining eyes. “Oh, do you mind if we come in a minute?” she said. “It would be so good of you. We’re making a report.”

“There’s nothing to report here,” the young woman answered. But the grey girl had slipped as gently past as though she had been the very spirit of adventure.

“Of course, I see that, but just as a matter of form, you know.”

“I’ve parted with most of my things,” the young woman said defensively, “since my husband died. It’s a hard life.”

“Yes, yes, but not worse than mine – always poking my nose into other people’s houses.”

The young woman was silent, evidently surprised.

“The landlord ought to keep you in better repair,” said the grey girl. “He owns next door, too, doesn’t he?”

The young woman nodded. “He’s a bad landlord. All down the street ‘ere it’s the same. Can’t get nothing done.”

The grey girl had gone over to a dirty bassinette where a half-naked child sprawled. An ugly little girl with fat red cheeks was sitting on a stool beside it, close to an open locker wherein could be seen a number of old meat bones.’

“Your chickabiddies?” said the grey girl. “Aren’t they sweet?”

The young woman’s face became illumined by a smile.

“They’re healthy,” she said.

“That’s more than can be said for all the children in the house, I expect,” murmured the grey girl.

The young woman replied emphatically, as though voicing an old grievance: “The three on the first floor’s not so bad, but I don’t let ‘em ‘ave anything to do with that lot at the top.”

Thyme saw her new friend’s hand hover over the child’s head like some pale dove. In answer to that gesture, the mother nodded. “Just that; you’ve got to clean ‘em every time they go near them children at the top.”

The grey girl looked at Thyme. ‘That’s where we’ve got to go, evidently,’ she seemed to say.

“A dirty lot!” muttered the young woman.

“It’s very hard on you.”

“It is. I’m workin’ at the laundry all day when I can get it. I can’t look after the children – they get everywhere.”

“Very hard,” murmured the grey girl. “I’ll make a note of that.”

Together with the little book, in which she was writing furiously, she had pulled out her handkerchief, and the sight of this handkerchief reposing on the floor gave Thyme a queer satisfaction, such as comes when one remarks in superior people the absence of a virtue existing in oneself.

“Well, we mustn’t keep you, Mrs. – Mrs. – ?”

“Cleary.”

“Cleary. How old’s this little one? Four? And the other? Two? They are ducks. Good-bye!”

In the corridor outside the grey girl whispered: “I do like the way we all pride ourselves on being better than someone else. I think it’s so hopeful and jolly. Shall we go up and see the abyss at the top?”

CHAPTER XXXV

A YOUNG GIRL’S MIND

A young girl’s mind is like a wood in Spring – now a rising mist of bluebells and flakes of dappled sunlight; now a world of still, wan, tender saplings, weeping they know not why. Through the curling twigs of boughs just green, its wings fly towards the stars; but the next moment they have drooped to mope beneath the damp bushes. It is ever yearning for and trembling at the future; in its secret places all the countless shapes of things that are to be are taking stealthy counsel of how to grow up without letting their gown of mystery fall. They rustle, whisper, shriek suddenly, and as suddenly fall into a delicious silence. From the first hazel-bush to the last may-tree it is an unending meeting-place of young solemn things eager to find out what they are, eager to rush forth to greet the kisses of the wind and sun, and for ever trembling back and hiding their faces. The spirit of that wood seems to lie with her ear close to the ground, a pale petal of a hand curved like a shell behind it, listening for the whisper of her own life. There she lies, white and supple, with dewy, wistful eyes, sighing: ‘What is my meaning? Ah, I am everything! Is there in all the world a thing so wonderful as I?.. Oh, I am nothing – my wings are heavy; I faint, I die!’

When Thyme, attended by the grey girl, emerged from the abyss at the top, her cheeks were flushed and her hands clenched. She said nothing. The grey girl, too, was silent, with a look such as a spirit divested of its body by long bathing in the river of reality might bend on one who has just come to dip her head. Thyme’s quick eyes saw that look, and her colour deepened. She saw, too, the glance of the Jewish youth when Martin joined them in the doorway.

‘Two girls now,’ he seemed to say. ‘He goes it, this young man!’

Supper was laid in her new friend’s room – pressed beef, potato salad, stewed prunes, and ginger ale. Martin and the grey girl talked. Thyme ate in silence, but though her eyes seemed fastened on her plate, she saw every glance that passed between them, heard every word they said. Those glances were not remarkable, nor were those words particularly important, but they were spoken in tones that seemed important to Thyme. ‘He never talks to me like that,’ she thought.

When supper was over they went out into the streets to walk, but at the door the grey girl gave Thyme’s arm a squeeze, her cheek a swift kiss, and turned back up the stairs.

“Aren’t you coming?” shouted Martin.

Her voice was heard answering from above: “No, not tonight.”

With the back of her hand Thyme rubbed off the kiss. The two cousins walked out amongst the traffic.

The evening was very warm and close; no breeze fanned the reeking town. Speaking little, they wandered among endless darkening streets, whence to return to the light and traffic of the Euston Road seemed like coming back to Heaven. At last, close again to her new home, Thyme said: “Why should one bother? It’s all a horrible great machine, trying to blot us out; people are like insects when you put your thumb on them and smear them on a book. I hate – I loathe it!”

“They might as well be healthy insects while they last,” answered Martin.

Thyme faced round at him. “I shan’t sleep tonight, Martin; get out my bicycle for me.”

Martin scrutinised her by the light of the street lamp. “All right,” he said; “I’ll come too.”

There are, say moralists, roads that lead to Hell, but it was on a road that leads to Hampstead that the two young cyclists set forth towards eleven o’clock. The difference between the character of the two destinations was soon apparent, for whereas man taken in bulk had perhaps made Hell, Hampstead had obviously been made by the upper classes. There were trees and gardens, and instead of dark canals of sky banked by the roofs of houses and hazed with the yellow scum of London lights, the heavens spread out in a wide trembling pool. From that rampart of the town, the Spaniard’s Road, two plains lay exposed to left and right; the scent of may-tree blossom had stolen up the hill; the rising moon clung to a fir-tree bough. Over the country the far stars presided, and sleep’s dark wings were spread above the fields – silent, scarce breathing, lay the body of the land. But to the south, where the town, that restless head, was lying, the stars seemed to have fallen and were sown in the thousand furrows of its great grey marsh, and from the dark miasma of those streets there travelled up a rustle, a whisper, the far allurement of some deathless dancer, dragging men to watch the swirl of her black, spangled drapery, the gleam of her writhing limbs. Like the song of the sea in a shell was the murmur of that witch of motion, clasping to her the souls of men, drawing them down into a soul whom none had ever known to rest.

Above the two young cousins, scudding along that ridge between the country and the town, three thin white clouds trailed slowly towards the west-like tired seabirds drifting exhausted far out from land on a sea blue to blackness with unfathomable depth.

For an hour those two rode silently into the country.

“Have we come far enough?” Martin said at last.

Thyme shook her head. A long, steep hill beyond a little sleeping village had brought them to a standstill. Across the shadowy fields a pale sheet of water gleamed out in moonlight. Thyme turned down towards it.

“I’m hot,” she said; “I want to bathe my face. Stay here. Don’t come with me.”

She left her bicycle, and, passing through a gate, vanished among the trees.

Martin stayed leaning against the gate. The village clock struck one. The distant call of a hunting owl, “Qu-wheek, qu-wheek!” sounded through the grave stillness of this last night of May. The moon at her curve’s summit floated at peace on the blue surface of the sky, a great closed water-lily. And Martin saw through the trees scimitar-shaped reeds clustering black along the pool’s shore. All about him the may-flowers were alight. It was such a night as makes dreams real and turns reality to dreams.

‘All moonlit nonsense!’ thought the young man, for the night had disturbed his heart.

But Thyme did not come back. He called to her, and in the death-like silence following his shouts he could hear his own heart beat. He passed in through the gate. She was nowhere to be seen. Why was she playing him this trick?

He turned up from the water among the trees, where the incense of the may-flowers hung heavy in the air.

‘Never look for a thing!’ he thought, and stopped to listen. It was so breathless that the leaves of a low bough against his cheek did not stir while he stood there. Presently he heard faint sounds, and stole towards them. Under a beech-tree he almost stumbled over Thyme, lying with her face pressed to the ground. The young doctor’s heart gave a sickening leap; he quickly knelt down beside her. The girl’s body, pressed close to the dry beech-mat, was being shaken by long sobs. From head to foot it quivered; her hat had been torn off, and the fragrance of her hair mingled with the fragrance of the night. In Martin’s heart something seemed to turn over and over, as when a boy he had watched a rabbit caught in a snare. He touched her. She sat up, and, dashing her hand across her eyes, cried: “Go away! Oh, go away!”

He put his arm round her and waited. Five minutes passed. The air was trembling with a sort of pale vibration, for the moonlight had found a hole in the dark foliage and flooded on to the ground beside them, whitening the black beech-husks. Some tiny bird, disturbed by these unwonted visitors, began chirruping and fluttering, but was soon still again. To Martin, so strangely close to this young creature in the night, there came a sense of utter disturbance.

‘Poor little thing!’ he thought; ‘be careful of her, comfort her!’ Hardness seemed so broken out of her, and the night so wonderful! And there came into the young man’s heart a throb of the knowledge – very rare with him, for he was not, like Hilary, a philosophising person – that she was as real as himself – suffering, hoping, feeling, not his hopes and feelings, but her own. His fingers kept pressing her shoulder through her thin blouse. And the touch of those fingers was worth more than any words, as this night, all moonlit dreams, was worth more than a thousand nights of sane reality.

Thyme twisted herself away from him at last. “I can’t,” she sobbed. “I’m not what you thought me – I’m not made for it!”

A scornful little smile curled Martin’s lip. So that was it! But the smile soon died away. One did not hit what was already down!

Thyme’s voice wailed through the silence. “I thought I could – but I want beautiful things. I can’t bear it all so grey and horrible. I’m not like that girl. I’m-an-amateur!”

‘If I kissed her – ’ Martin thought.

She sank down again, burying her face in the dark beech-mat. The moonlight had passed on. Her voice came faint and stiffed, as out of the tomb of faith. “I’m no good. I never shall be. I’m as bad as mother!”

But to Martin there was only the scent of her hair.

“No,” murmured Thyme’s voice, “I’m only fit for miserable Art… I’m only fit for – nothing!”

They were so close together on the dark beech mat that their bodies touched, and a longing to clasp her in his arms came over him.

“I’m a selfish beast!” moaned the smothered voice. “I don’t really care for all these people – I only care because they’re ugly for me to see!”

Martin reached his hand out to her hair. If she had shrunk away he would have seized her, but as though by instinct she let it rest there. And at her sudden stillness, strange and touching, Martin’s quick passion left him. He slipped his arm round her and raised her up, as if she had been a child, and for a long time sat listening with a queer twisted smile to the moanings of her lost illusions.

The dawn found them still sitting there against the bole of the beech-tree. Her lips were parted; the tears had dried on her sleeping face, pillowed against his shoulder, while he still watched her sideways with the ghost of that twisted smile.

And beyond the grey water, like some tired wanton, the moon in an orange hood was stealing down to her rest between the trees.

CHAPTER XXXVI

STEPHEN SIGNS CHEQUES

Cecilia received the mystic document containing these words “Am quite all right. Address, 598, Euston Road, three doors off Martin. Letter follows explaining. Thyme,” she had not even realised her little daughter’s departure. She went up to Thyme’s room at once, and opening all the drawers and cupboards, stared into them one by one. The many things she saw there allayed the first pangs of her disquiet.

‘She has only taken one little trunk,’ she thought, ‘and left all her evening frocks.’

This act of independence alarmed rather than surprised her, such had been her sense of the unrest in the domestic atmosphere during the last month. Since the evening when she had found Thyme in foods of tears because of the Hughs’ baby, her maternal eyes had not failed to notice something new in the child’s demeanour – a moodiness, an air almost of conspiracy, together with an emphatic increase of youthful sarcasm: Fearful of probing deep, she had sought no confidence, nor had she divulged her doubts to Stephen.

Amongst the blouses a sheet of blue ruled paper, which had evidently escaped from a notebook, caught her eye. Sentences were scrawled on it in pencil. Cecilia read: “That poor little dead thing was so grey and pinched, and I seemed to realise all of a sudden how awful it is for them. I must – I must – I will do something!”

Cecilia dropped the sheet of paper; her hand was trembling. There was no mystery in that departure now, and Stephen’s words came into her mind: “It’s all very well up to a certain point, and nobody sympathises with them more than I do; but after that it becomes destructive of all comfort, and that does no good to anyone.”

The sound sense of those words had made her feel queer when they were spoken; they were even more sensible than she had thought. Did her little daughter, so young and pretty, seriously mean to plunge into the rescue work of dismal slums, to cut herself adrift from sweet sounds and scents and colours, from music and art, from dancing, flowers, and all that made life beautiful? The secret forces of fastidiousness, an inborn dread of the fanatical, and all her real ignorance of what such a life was like, rose in Cecilia with a force which made her feel quite sick. Better that she herself should do this thing than that her own child should be deprived of air and light and all the just environment of her youth and beauty. ‘She must come back – she must listen to me!’ she thought. ‘We will begin together; we will start a nice little creche of our own, or – perhaps Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace could find us some regular work on one of her committees.’