Saint's Progress

“Does she get news of her boy? Do you remember that May Week, Edward? We were very young then; even you were young. That was such a pretty little letter you wrote me. I can see you still-wandering in your dress clothes along the river, among the ‘holy’ cows.”

But her eyes slid round again, watching her other neighbour and the girl. A violinist had begun to play the Cesar Franck Sonata. It was Pierson’s favourite piece of music, bringing him, as it were, a view of heaven, of devotional blue air where devout stars were shining in a sunlit noon, above ecstatic trees and waters where ecstatic swans were swimming.

“Queer world, Mr. Pierson! Fancy those boys having to go back to barrack life after listening to that! What’s your feeling? Are we moving back to the apes? Did we touch top note with that Sonata?”

Pierson turned and contemplated his questioner shrewdly.

“No, Captain Fort, I do not think we are moving back to the apes; if we ever came from them. Those boys have the souls of heroes!”

“I know that, sir, perhaps better than you do.”

“Ah! yes,” said Pierson humbly, “I forgot, of course.” But he still looked at his neighbour doubtfully. This Captain Fort, who was a friend of Leila’s, and who had twice been to see them, puzzled him. He had a frank face, a frank voice, but queer opinions, or so it seemed to, Pierson – little bits of Moslemism, little bits of the backwoods, and the veldt; queer unexpected cynicisms, all sorts of side views on England had lodged in him, and he did not hide them. They came from him like bullets, in that frank voice, and drilled little holes in the listener. Those critical sayings flew so much more poignantly from one who had been through the same educational mill as himself, than if they had merely come from some rough diamond, some artist, some foreigner, even from a doctor like George. And they always made him uncomfortable, like the touch of a prickly leaf; they did not amuse him. Certainly Edward Pierson shrank from the rough touches of a knock-about philosophy. After all, it was but natural that he should.

He and Noel left after the first part of the concert, parting from the other two at the door. He slipped his hand through her arm; and, following out those thoughts of his in the concert-hall, asked:

“Do you like Captain Fort, Nollie?”

“Yes; he’s a nice man.”

“He seems a nice man, certainly; he has a nice smile, but strange views, I’m afraid.”

“He thinks the Germans are not much worse than we are; he says that a good many of us are bullies too.”

“Yes, that is the sort of thing I mean.”

“But are we, Daddy?”

“Surely not.”

“A policeman I talked to once said the same. Captain Fort says that very few men can stand having power put into their hands without being spoiled. He told me some dreadful stories. He says we have no imagination, so that we often do things without seeing how brutal they are.”

“We’re not perfect, Nollie; but on the whole I think we’re a kind people.”

Noel was silent a moment, then said suddenly:

“Kind people often think others are kind too, when they really aren’t. Captain Fort doesn’t make that mistake.”

“I think he’s a little cynical, and a little dangerous.”

“Are all people dangerous who don’t think like others, Daddy?”

Pierson, incapable of mockery, was not incapable of seeing when he was being mocked. He looked at his daughter with a smile.

“Not quite so bad as that, Nollie; but Mr. Fort is certainly subversive. I think perhaps he has seen too many queer sides of life.”

“I like him the better for that.”

“Well, well,” Pierson answered absently. He had work to do in preparation for a Confirmation Class, and sought his study on getting in.

Noel went to the dining-room to drink her hot milk. The curtains were not drawn, and bright moonlight was coming in. Without lighting up, she set the etna going, and stood looking at the moon-full for the second time since she and Cyril had waited for it in the Abbey. And pressing her hands to her breast, she shivered. If only she could summon him from the moonlight out there; if only she were a witch-could see him, know where he was, what doing! For a fortnight now she had received no letter. Every day since he had left she had read the casualty lists, with the superstitious feeling that to do so would keep him out of them. She took up the Times. There was just enough light, and she read the roll of honour – till the moon shone in on her, lying on the floor, with the dropped journal…

But she was proud, and soon took grief to her room, as on that night after he left her, she had taken love. No sign betrayed to the house her disaster; the journal on the floor, and the smell of the burnt milk which had boiled over, revealed nothing. After all, she was but one of a thousand hearts which spent that moonlit night in agony. Each night, year in, year out, a thousand faces were buried in pillows to smother that first awful sense of desolation, and grope for the secret spirit-place where bereaved souls go, to receive some feeble touch of healing from knowledge of each other’s trouble…

In the morning she got up from her sleepless bed, seemed to eat her breakfast, and went off to her hospital. There she washed up plates and dishes, with a stony face, dark under the eyes.

The news came to Pierson in a letter from Thirza, received at lunch-time. He read it with a dreadful aching. Poor, poor little Nollie! What an awful trouble for her! And he, too, went about his work with the nightmare thought that he had to break the news to her that evening. Never had he felt more lonely, more dreadfully in want of the mother of his children. She would have known how to soothe, how to comfort. On her heart the child could have sobbed away grief. And all that hour, from seven to eight, when he was usually in readiness to fulfil the functions of God’s substitute to his parishioners, he spent in prayer of his own, for guidance how to inflict and heal this blow. When, at last, Noel came, he opened the door to her himself, and, putting back the hair from her forehead, said: “Come in here a moment, my darling!” Noel followed him into the study, and sat down. “I know already, Daddy.” Pierson was more dismayed by this stoicism than he would have been by any natural out burst. He stood, timidly stroking her hair, murmuring to her what he had said to Gratian, and to so many others in these days: “There is no death; look forward to seeing him again; God is merciful” And he marvelled at the calmness of that pale face – so young.

“You are very brave, my child!” he said.

“There’s nothing else to be, is there?”

“Isn’t there anything I can do for you, Nollie?”

“No, Daddy.”

“When did you see it?”

“Last night.” She had already known for twenty-four hours without telling him!

“Have you prayed, my darling?”

“No.”

“Try, Nollie!”

“No.”

“Ah, try!”

“It would be ridiculous, Daddy; you don’t know.”

Grievously upset and bewildered, Pierson moved away from her, and said:

“You look dreadfully tired. Would you like a hot bath, and your dinner in bed?”

“I’d like some tea; that’s all.” And she went out.

When he had seen that the tea had gone up to her, he too went out; and, moved by a longing for woman’s help, took a cab to Leila’s flat.

III

On leaving the concert Leila and Jimmy Fort had secured a taxi; a vehicle which, at night, in wartime, has certain advantages for those who desire to become better acquainted. Vibration, sufficient noise, darkness, are guaranteed; and all that is lacking for the furtherance of emotion is the scent of honeysuckle and roses, or even of the white flowering creeper which on the stoep at High Constantia had smelled so much sweeter than petrol.

When Leila found herself with Fort in that loneliness to which she had been looking forward, she was overcome by an access of nervous silence. She had been passing through a strange time for weeks past. Every night she examined her sensations without quite understanding them as yet. When a woman comes to her age, the world-force is liable to take possession, saying:

“You were young, you were beautiful, you still have beauty, you are not, cannot be, old. Cling to youth, cling to beauty; take all you can get, before your face gets lines and your hair grey; it is impossible that you have been loved for the last time.”

To see Jimmy Fort at the concert, talking to Noel, had brought this emotion to a head. She was not of a grudging nature, and could genuinely admire Noel, but the idea that Jimmy Fort might also admire disturbed her greatly. He must not; it was not fair; he was too old – besides, the girl had her boy; and she had taken care that he should know it. So, leaning towards him, while a bare-shouldered young lady sang, she had whispered:

“Penny?”

And he had whispered back:

“Tell you afterwards.”

That had comforted her. She would make him take her home. It was time she showed her heart.

And now, in the cab, resolved to make her feelings known, in sudden shyness she found it very difficult. Love, to which for quite three years she had been a stranger, was come to life within her. The knowledge was at once so sweet, and so disturbing, that she sat with face averted, unable to turn the precious minutes to account. They arrived at the flat without having done more than agree that the streets were dark, and the moon bright. She got out with a sense of bewilderment, and said rather desperately:

“You must come up and have a cigarette. It’s quite early, still.”

He went up.

“Wait just a minute,” said Leila.

Sitting there with his drink and his cigarette, he stared at some sunflowers in a bowl – Famille Rose – and waited just ten; smiling a little, recalling the nose of the fairy princess, and the dainty way her lips shaped the words she spoke. If she had not had that lucky young devil of a soldier boy, one would have wanted to buckle her shoes, lay one’s coat in the mud for her, or whatever they did in fairytales. One would have wanted – ah! what would one not have wanted! Hang that soldier boy! Leila said he was twenty-two. By George! how old it made a man feel who was rising forty, and tender on the off-fore! No fairy princesses for him! Then a whiff of perfume came to his nostrils; and, looking up, he saw Leila standing before him, in a long garment of dark silk, whence her white arms peeped out.

“Another penny? Do you remember these things, Jimmy? The Malay women used to wear them in Cape Town. You can’t think what a relief it is to get out of my slave’s dress. Oh! I’m so sick of nursing! Jimmy, I want to live again a little!”

The garment had taken fifteen years off her age, and a gardenia, just where the silk crossed on her breast, seemed no whiter than her skin. He wondered whimsically whether it had dropped to her out of the dark!

“Live?” he said. “Why! Don’t you always?”

She raised her hands so that the dark silk fell, back from the whole length of those white arms.

“I haven’t lived for two years. Oh, Jimmy! Help me to live a little! Life’s so short, now.”

Her eyes disturbed him, strained and pathetic; the sight of her arms; the scent of the flower disturbed him; he felt his cheeks growing warm, and looked down.

She slipped suddenly forward on to her knees at his feet, took his hand, pressed it with both of hers, and murmured:

“Love me a little! What else is there? Oh! Jimmy, what else is there?”

And with the scent of the flower, crushed by their hands, stirring his senses, Fort thought: ‘Ah, what else is there, in these forsaken days?’

To Jimmy Fort, who had a sense of humour, and was in some sort a philosopher, the haphazard way life settled things seldom failed to seem amusing. But when he walked away from Leila’s he was pensive. She was a good sort, a pretty creature, a sportswoman, an enchantress; but – she was decidedly mature. And here he was – involved in helping her to “live”; involved almost alarmingly, for there had been no mistaking the fact that she had really fallen in love with him.

This was flattering and sweet. Times were sad, and pleasure scarce, but – ! The roving instinct which had kept him, from his youth up, rolling about the world, shied instinctively at bonds, however pleasant, the strength and thickness of which he could not gauge; or, was it that perhaps for the first time in his life he had been peeping into fairyland of late, and this affair with Leila was by no means fairyland? He had another reason, more unconscious, for uneasiness. His heart, for all his wanderings, was soft, he had always found it difficult to hurt anyone, especially anyone who did him the honour to love him. A sort of presentiment weighed on him while he walked the moonlit streets at this most empty hour, when even the late taxis had ceased to run. Would she want him to marry her? Would it be his duty, if she did? And then he found himself thinking of the concert, and that girl’s face, listening to the tales he was telling her. ‘Deuced queer world,’ he thought, ‘the way things go! I wonder what she would think of us, if she knew – and that good padre! Phew!’

He made such very slow progress, for fear of giving way in his leg, and having to spend the night on a door-step, that he had plenty of time for rumination; but since it brought him no confidence whatever, he began at last to feel: ‘Well; it might be a lot worse. Take the goods the gods send you and don’t fuss!’ And suddenly he remembered with extreme vividness that night on the stoep at High Constantia, and thought with dismay: ‘I could have plunged in over head and ears then; and now – I can’t! That’s life all over! Poor Leila! Me miserum, too, perhaps – who knows!’

IV

When Leila opened her door to Edward Pierson, her eyes were smiling, and her lips were soft. She seemed to smile and be soft all over, and she took both his hands. Everything was a pleasure to her that day, even the sight of this sad face. She was in love and was loved again; had a present and a future once more, not only her own full past; and she must finish with Edward in half an hour, for Jimmy was coming. She sat down on the divan, took his hand in a sisterly way, and said:

“Tell me, Edward; I can see you’re in trouble. What is it?”

“Noel. The boy she was fond of has been killed.”

She dropped his hand.

“Oh, no! Poor child! It’s too cruel!” Tears started up in her grey eyes, and she touched them with a tiny handkerchief. “Poor, poor little Noel! Was she very fond of him?”

“A very sudden, short engagement; but I’m afraid she takes it desperately to heart. I don’t know how to comfort her; only a woman could. I came to ask you: Do you think she ought to go on with her work? What do you think, Leila? I feel lost!”

Leila, gazing at him, thought: ‘Lost? Yes, you look lost, my poor Edward!’

“I should let her go on,” she said: “it helps; it’s the only thing that does help. I’ll see if I can get them to let her come into the wards. She ought to be in touch with suffering and the men; that kitchen work will try her awfully just now: Was he very young?”

“Yes. They wanted to get married. I was opposed to it.”

Leila’s lip curled ever so little. ‘You would be!’ she thought.

“I couldn’t bear to think of Nollie giving herself hastily, like that; they had only known each other three weeks. It was very hard for me, Leila. And then suddenly he was sent to the front.”

Resentment welled up in Leila. The kill-Joys! As if life didn’t kill joy fast enough! Her cousin’s face at that moment was almost abhorrent to her, its gentle perplexed goodness darkened and warped by that monkish look. She turned away, glanced at the clock over the hearth, and thought: ‘Yes, and he would stop Jimmy and me! He would say: “Oh, no! dear Leila – you mustn’t love – it’s sin!” How I hate that word!’

“I think the most dreadful thing in life,” she said abruptly, “is the way people suppress their natural instincts; what they suppress in themselves they make other people suppress too, if they can; and that’s the cause of half the misery in this world.”

Then at the surprise on his face at this little outburst, whose cause he could not know, she added hastily: “I hope Noel will get over it quickly, and find someone else.”

“Yes. If they had been married – how much worse it would have been. Thank God, they weren’t!”

“I don’t know. They would have had an hour of bliss. Even an hour of bliss is worth something in these days.”

“To those who only believe in this ‘life – perhaps.”

‘Ten minutes more!’ she thought: ‘Oh, why doesn’t he go?’ But at that very moment he got up, and instantly her heart went out to him again.

“I’m so sorry, Edward. If I can help in any way – I’ll try my best with Noel to-morrow; and do come to me whenever you feel inclined.”

She took his hand in hers; afraid that he would sit down again, she yet could not help a soft glance into his eyes, and a little rush of pitying warmth in the pressure of her hand.

Pierson smiled; the smile which always made her sorry for him.

“Good-bye, Leila; you’re very good and kind to me. Good-bye.”

Her bosom swelled with relief and compassion; and – she let him out.

Running upstairs again she thought: ‘I’ve just time. What shall I put on? Poor Edward, poor Noel! What colour does Jimmy like? Oh! Why didn’t I keep him those ten years ago – what utter waste!’ And, feverishly adorning herself, she came back to the window, and stood there in the dark to watch, while some jasmine which grew below sent up its scent to her. ‘Would I marry him?’ she thought, ‘if he asked me? But he won’t ask me – why should he now? Besides, I couldn’t bear him to feel I wanted position or money from him. I only want love – love – love!’ The silent repetition of that word gave her a wonderful sense of solidity and comfort. So long as she only wanted love, surely he would give it.

A tall figure turned down past the church, coming towards her. It was he! And suddenly she bethought herself. She went to the little black piano, sat down, and began to sing the song she had sung to him ten years ago: “If I could be the falling dew and fall on thee all day!” She did not even look round when he came in, but continued to croon out the words, conscious of him just behind her shoulder in the dark. But when she had finished, she got up and threw her arms round him, strained him to her, and burst into tears on his shoulder; thinking of Noel and that dead boy, thinking of the millions of other boys, thinking of her own happiness, thinking of those ten years wasted, of how short was life, and love; thinking – hardly knowing what she thought! And Jimmy Fort, very moved by this emotion which he only half understood, pressed her tightly in his arms, and kissed her wet cheeks and her neck, pale and warm in the darkness.

V

1

Noel went on with her work for a month, and then, one morning, fainted over a pile of dishes. The noise attracted attention, and Mrs. Lynch was summoned.

The sight of her lying there so deadly white taxed Leila’s nerves severely. But the girl revived quickly, and a cab was sent for. Leila went with her, and told the driver to stop at Camelot Mansions. Why take her home in this state, why not save the jolting, and let her recover properly? They went upstairs arm in arm. Leila made her lie down on the divan, and put a hot-water bottle to her feet. Noel was still so passive and pale that even to speak to her seemed a cruelty. And, going to her little sideboard, Leila stealthily extracted a pint bottle of some champagne which Jimmy Fort had sent in, and took it with two glasses and a corkscrew into her bedroom. She drank a little herself, and came out bearing a glass to the girl. Noel shook her head, and her eyes seemed to say: “Do you really think I’m so easily mended?” But Leila had been through too much in her time to despise earthly remedies, and she held it to the girl’s lips until she drank. It was excellent champagne, and, since Noel had never yet touched alcohol, had an instantaneous effect. Her eyes brightened; little red spots came up in her cheeks. And suddenly she rolled over and buried her face deep in a cushion. With her short hair, she looked so like a child lying there, that Leila knelt down, stroking her head, and saying: “There, there; my love! There, there!”

At last the girl raised herself; now that the pallid, masklike despair of the last month was broken, she seemed on fire, and her face had a wild look. She withdrew herself from Leila’s touch, and, crossing her arms tightly across her chest, said:

“I can’t bear it; I can’t sleep. I want him back; I hate life – I hate the world. We hadn’t done anything – only just loved each other. God likes punishing; just because we loved each other; we had only one day to love each other – only one day – only one!”

Leila could see the long white throat above those rigid arms straining and swallowing; it gave her a choky feeling to watch it. The voice, uncannily dainty for all the wildness of the words and face, went on:

“I won’t – I don’t want to live. If there’s another life, I shall go to him. And if there isn’t – it’s just sleep.”

Leila put out her hand to ward of these wild wanderings. Like most women who live simply the life of their senses and emotions, she was orthodox; or rather never speculated on such things.

“Tell me about yourself and him,” she said.

Noel fastened her great eyes on her cousin. “We loved each other; and children are born, aren’t they, after you’ve loved? But mine won’t be!” From the look on her face rather than from her words, the full reality of her meaning came to Leila, vanished, came again. Nonsense! But – what an awful thing, if true! That which had always seemed to her such an exaggerated occurrence in the common walks of life – why! now, it was a tragedy! Instinctively she raised herself and put her arms round the girl.

“My poor dear!” she said; “you’re fancying things!”

The colour had faded out of Noel’s face, and, with her head thrown back and her eyelids half-closed, she looked like a scornful young ghost.

“If it is – I shan’t live. I don’t mean to – it’s easy to die. I don’t mean Daddy to know.”

“Oh! my dear, my dear!” was all Leila could stammer.

“Was it wrong, Leila?”

“Wrong? I don’t know – wrong? If it really is so – it was – unfortunate. But surely, surely – you’re mistaken?”

Noel shook her head. “I did it so that we should belong to each other. Nothing could have taken him from me.”

Leila caught at the girl’s words.

“Then, my dear – he hasn’t quite gone from you, you see?”

Noel’s lips formed a “No” which was inaudible. “But Daddy!” she whispered.

Edward’s face came before Leila so vividly that she could hardly see the girl for the tortured shape of it. Then the hedonist in her revolted against that ascetic vision. Her worldly judgment condemned and deplored this calamity, her instinct could not help applauding that hour of life and love, snatched out of the jaws of death. “Need he ever know?” she said.

“I could never lie to Daddy. But it doesn’t matter. Why should one go on living, when life is rotten?”

Outside the sun was shining brightly, though it was late October. Leila got up from her knees. She stood at the window thinking hard.

“My dear,” she said at last, “you mustn’t get morbid. Look at me! I’ve had two husbands, and – and – well, a pretty stormy up and down time of it; and I daresay I’ve got lots of trouble before me. But I’m not going to cave in. Nor must you. The Piersons have plenty of pluck; you mustn’t be a traitor to your blood. That’s the last thing. Your boy would have told you to stick it. These are your ‘trenches,’ and you’re not going to be downed, are you?”

After she had spoken there was a long silence, before Noel said:

“Give me a cigarette, Leila.”

Leila produced the little flat case she carried.

“That’s brave,” she said. “Nothing’s incurable at your age. Only one thing’s incurable – getting old.”

Noel laughed. “That’s curable too, isn’t it?”

“Not without surrender.”

Again there was a silence, while the blue fume from two cigarettes fast-smoked, rose towards the low ceiling. Then Noel got up from the divan, and went over to the piano. She was still in her hospital dress of lilac-coloured linen, and while she stood there touching the keys, playing a chord now, and then, Leila’s heart felt hollow from compassion; she was so happy herself just now, and this child so very wretched!