Chapter XXIV

“Yet I do think it would be nice of you to go with him as far as Genoa,” Mrs. Kerr said to Ronald, three evenings afterwards. At an end of her gentle insistence she could do no more; she left the appeal in the air to dissolve or solidify, sighed, turned away from her son and took up her letters. The appeal stretched out and closed upon Ronald’s unwillingness tentacle after shadowy tentacle; he got up and walked round Mrs. Kerr’s room uneasily moving his shoulders, writhing mentally like the Laocoön and feeling himself constricted at every point.

“Well I am blowed,” he said petulantly. “I really am blowed!” But Mrs. Kerr was reading a letter.

Ronald could not understand why two people who had come to this place unaware of each other, in perfect integrity and without the intention of seeking a mate, should not be allowed to remain here untroubled now that a transitory notion of marrying one another had been abandoned. Or if they were due to depart, why had they to depart processionally in a long train of Spirits Pitiful; regrets, remorses, condolences, noisy emotions given the licence of carnival? Mrs. Bellamy was “taking away” Sydney (who now had to be bundled about like a lay-figure and spoken of like the unillustrious dead) to a place on the French Riviera and later to England. Milton was to move on to Florence, even to Assisi; there seemed a vagueness as to whether he might not be trusted in proper abandon to walk over the very edge of Italy into the sea. He had timed his departure, unwittingly, for the same date, the same train as Ronald’s. Ronald, appalled by the thought of a journey with one for whom the web of a fatal attachment would be with every moment attenuating and snapping off strand by strand, had announced to his mother that travel with Milton he would not; it could not be done. He proposed to remain with her several days more.

“We’d see each other on the platform,” Ronald said, “we should be bound to see each other on the platform and we should feel such asses looking all round each other and then getting into different carriages.”

“Well, don’t get into different carriages; talk to each other.”

“I really don’t know how to. You see, he would be bound to think I was embarrassed. I think he is the sort of man who would rather expect one to be.”

Many people were embarrassed by Milton, avoided meeting him in the corridors, moved away when he came into the lounge and when they caught his eye did not know whether to look and hurried away to complain of him. He had expected and hoped that nothing would “come out” until he and Sydney had managed to slip away quietly; but in this he had counted without her directness—he had written a note on the matter to send to her room but on reading it through had destroyed it (it seemed to reek with the meanest solicitudes) and had sat with his head in his hands unable to write her another. Sydney had “told” Tessa; Tessa, through confidantes fatally chosen and an air for the world of reserved desolation, let everyone know. He was offered during the tête-à-têtes which circumstances or the conscientiousness of a few friends forced on him all kinds of silences and found them poor enough meat in his hunger, his sudden ache for companionship; silences applied tenderly like a swab to a wound, silences held up like a shield, square and blank, silences poked across at him gingerly; the silences of Miss Pym, of Colonel Duperrier, of Eileen Lawrence. Sensitive to so abashing his world he began to feel like a leper. His perturbation as to whether he ought to be here, the increasingly sharp little stings with which consciousness less of suffering than of being a too-evidently suffering man was brought home again and again to him, kept up such a din in his mind that thought was impossible. He could not think of Sydney or of what they had lost or gained. Now and then he would brace himself and with cold exultation look ahead to an ordeal in Florence.

Veronica spoke to him; she gave him all her distracted sympathy then took it all back again, in a breath; “There are worse things,” she said, “than not being engaged to be married. I would rather do anything on earth than meet Victor just now—will you walk down with me and look for a court?” That had been early one morning; they had stolen down to the courts together and played singles till other people began to assemble. He gave her minus-fifteen and she won their three sets. “You know, you mustn’t let yourself go to pieces,” she said, shaking her head at him as they walked back together. “You used to be good.” “But I’m _melting away_ in all this!” exclaimed Milton explosively. Later, as they turned in at the Hotel gate she had an idea. “I say, you do marry people, don’t you—I mean, professionally? It would be rather a joke if you were to marry us. Rather a _grim_ joke, I daresay,” she added with bent brows, tighting her racquet-press. But that evening, as with a feverish sense of exclusion from everywhere he walked up and down on the gravel, she melted ahead of him into the darkness, trailing the wraith of a shawl from her shoulders, going down to the sea with her Victor to look at the moonlight. She came into the lounge again shining-eyed, mysterious from having been kissed, and Milton felt that at least she was not unhappy.

He was haunted by Ronald. Ronald, whenever they met, paused momentarily, opened and shut his mouth, seemed always just on the verge of an utterance which was to clarify everything and banish confusion. An oblique glance, penetrating, but addressed to one another’s features rather than eye to eye, would pass between them. Then, smiling regretfully as though he had been urgently called away, Ronald would shake back the piece of hair from his forehead and dart off. Milton had the feeling each time of having been weighed and found wanting. There must have been something about him that brought Ronald up dead. He told himself this did not matter, he would not see Ronald again, then the thought of not seeing Ronald again would itself inexpressibly sadden him. The thought of Ronald and Sydney going away in different directions, and of the unlikelihood of _their_ ever meeting came to be even more painful, the injury was personal, as though one or the other or both of them had been part of himself. Every time he met Ronald there was the embarrassment, not just of that one moment of failure sharp as the slam of a door but of a dozen remembered others mounting up behind it.

“I _will_ speak,” Milton said to himself at last and Ronald must have come to the same decision, for the next time they met they both began to talk at once, irrelevantly and loudly. It was this, chiefly, which had made Ronald so unwilling that they should travel together to Genoa. Walking about the room he was trying with great difficulty to explain this to his mother.

Mrs. Kerr, still with an eye on her letters but with attention dutifully withdrawn from her own affairs, raised herself among the cushions and turned a little round on the sofa to consider her son’s difficulty.

“I don’t want to sacrifice you, my darling,” she said, “but if you would do this you would really oblige me. You see, Ronald, the poor man does like you. I thought if you would try and be nice to him—make it all easier—just for an hour or two in the train.”

“It’s an Italian train,” said Ronald gloomily.

“I know, I know,” said Mrs. Kerr and nodded in helpless contrition. “I’m afraid,” she went on irrelevantly, “he feels sore about this—He feels——”

“_Sore?_” echoed Ronald. “Ridiculous! Sore?”

“I think so, a little ... with me,” said Mrs. Kerr and adjusted the shade of the reading-lamp. Her face by that movement emerged from red dusk and was shown to her son like a picture, lit up; a face lying rather wearily back among the cushions, full of lucidity and gentleness; less beautiful at the moment than burning in on his consciousness its essential quality, mental or spiritual, that he could not define. Ronald wondered again if this was what he would learn to call love, or whether he would ever experience any other: this feeling of being burnt in upon that left no room for desire. “I half think,” Mrs. Kerr went on reluctantly, as though she were reading aloud from the confused blotted chart of poor Milton’s mind, “that _he_ half thinks I’ve meddled. Of course I have a kind of influence over Sydney, but I should never have used it to interfere in her love-affairs. I have always wanted her to marry and seen that she wanted to marry and though I was surprised just at first that she should be able to think about _him_ in that way, they both seemed so pleasant with each other that I would have done a great deal to help them on.”

It was a strange and sudden relief to Ronald—he could not have said why—to hear his mother say all this in a matter-of-fact voice.

“Poor old Milton,” he said once and could not help laughing. Mrs. Kerr also smiled, less and less ruefully as his laughter began to infect her. “Poor old chap,” said Ronald again, noisily. He waited for what was to come next, but his mother seemed to have done speaking. “Of course,” he went on, at the same pitch of jocularity, “if it’s a case of the family honour ... anything _I_ can do....”

It did sound ridiculous, the way he put it, and Mrs. Kerr smiled again. “I should feel happier,” she confessed, “if the poor dear went off more or less happily. You see, he does like you.”

“Oh yes, I daresay he does. I daresay he thinks I have a beautiful expression and wishes I would come and sing in his choir.”

“Something like that, I daresay. But people are not put in choirs for their beautiful expressions—Seriously, Ronald, I’m doing this because I want to do anything I can for him. It means a lot to send you away from me sooner than you have to go. You see, I’ll be lonely,” said Mrs. Kerr, and glanced away from the statement when it was made as though she saw it as ugly and trivial.

“Oh Mother....”

He caught at her hand but she drew it away again. “I don’t want you to stay and be kind to me. I hope I shall be dead a long time before people are kind to me.” She shivered—not, he thought, at death.

“You’re lonely?”

Her eyes took him in, very tiny, and round him the room and the world with its tiny people drawn by their hundreds of tides. She nodded and her thought passed ahead. “You see,” she said, “I who am what is called an attractive person am going to be lonelier than other people, the beautiful or the devoted. I shan’t be able to crowd myself round for consolation and company with hundreds of little photographs of loving or having been loved.”

“A large number of people seem to have loved you,” said Ronald. Though shaken, he spoke definitely, very dispassionately. It seemed important, so important that his mouth went dry, that his mother should not be allowed to go on looking through him and thinking beyond him with that peculiar expression. “A large number ...” he repeated.

“No, no one, I think,” said Mrs. Kerr, after a pause in which she tried to remember. While she spoke she began glancing through her letters abstractedly and with an air of indifference. Then she smiled. “At any rate,” she went on, having extracted an envelope that had already been opened, “I don’t begin to be lonely just yet—here’s such a charming letter, an invitation, from those Emmerys in Paris.”

“Oh, _Margot_ Emmery?”

“Yes, Margot. I am so fond of her. So you, my dear, can run away to Sicily.” She tugged gently at a fold of her tea-gown on which he happened to be sitting and swept him away from her with a gesture as though he were a little boy again and she were sending him off to bed.

“Well, at any rate,” said Ronald nodding, sitting tight on the tea-gown and leaning forward to show her he had scored a point, “Sydney is fond of you.”

“I suppose she is,” Mrs. Kerr said reflectively.

“Then _why_ ...” began Ronald. “Why on earth....” He stopped again and blinked his eyes, as though he had suddenly seen everything as so complicated that he could only believe in some defect in his vision. Mrs. Kerr gently stirred on the sofa, the loud ticking of the travelling clock at her elbow became suddenly audible. Ronald looking round the room caught sight of his own photograph—“Ronald”—and thought how odd it was that Mrs. Kerr sitting on the sofa beside him should have a son and how much odder it was that Ronald should have a mother. He found himself arguing very loudly, wisely, and dogmatically and was reminded of the only two occasions when he had been drunk. “You’re not fair to yourself,” he kept repeating. “You’re not, Mother, you’re not really. You _ought_ to be fair....”

She looked up at him once or twice from over Margot Emmery’s letter and said presently, “Well, my dear Ronald, I leave that to you—Hush!... Listen! Come in!... Ronald, I’m sure I heard somebody. Do go and see who it is.”

“It’s Miss Warren,” said Ronald, having opened the door grudgingly, and Sydney came in.

She came in doubtfully, carrying a pile of books, with a pair of long white leather gloves dangling over her arm. She and Ronald stared at each other vaguely and steadily over the reading-lamp, the only light in the room. In the red dusk over the shade their faces were blank to each other; their features were scarcely visible and their expressions, if they had expressions, not visible at all. As it was a spring night the window stood open out on to the balcony and now and then the curtains were sucked in and swelled out again by a breath of mild air.

“I’ll be getting along,” said Ronald to Sydney.

“Oh no, don’t go,” But the room seemed too small for three people.

Ronald, seeking for and failing to catch his mother’s eye, looked round him rather confusedly and finally stepped out between the curtains on to the balcony where he lighted a cigarette and doubling his elbows under him leaned forward to stare at the sea. The exit was not a happy one, in the room behind he remained present yet not present. Sydney put her pile of books carefully down on the table and counted them over, then held out the pair of gloves to Mrs. Kerr. “I think these are all of your books that I had,” said she. “And I think these are your gloves; I must have brought them upstairs with me after a walk. I found them among my things.”

“So they are!” said Mrs. Kerr and looked at the gloves in pleased surprise. “How nice to have them back—but I never missed them. But I do wish, my dear, you hadn’t brought all those books back. Wouldn’t you keep them? I shall never have room for them all in my trunk.”

“I shouldn’t have room in my trunk either.”

“Not if I wrote your name in them all?”

“I’m afraid I still shouldn’t have room in my trunk,” Sydney said and smiled conventionally.

“Then I shall have to give them away to someone else,” said Mrs. Kerr with a sigh. “Don’t just hover, Sydney—must you go yet? Stay and sit down.”

“I’m afraid I can’t. I’m going through my things to-night and beginning to pack—I’d no idea I’d so many. We go, you see, the day after to-morrow, and to-morrow night I shall be going out with the Lawrences.”

“Oh, the Lawrences?... Well, I expect it will be very nice for you all to spend your last evening together. Are you really going the day after to-morrow?”

“Yes. So’s Ronald, isn’t he?”

“He is indeed,” sighed Ronald’s mother. “How time does seem to have slipped away from us all.... Mr. Milton and Ronald you know, are hoping to travel together.... _Poor_ Mr. Milton...!”

“Yes,” said Sydney, “I suppose he is a good deal laughed at.”

Mrs. Kerr glanced at her with raised eyebrows a moment and bit her lips as though she had winced for a moment inwardly. There seemed to be depths of crudeness here that she dared not fathom. “Not as far as I know, my dear,” she said gently. “Unless, of course, you feel able to laugh at him?”

“I’m not much amused really. Do I seem to be much amused?”

Mrs. Kerr looked at her gently and critically. “No, I don’t think you do. You do look older, my dear, yes, you certainly have developed. I suppose there is nothing like buying experience that somebody else pays for.”

“You’re very sensitive to all this,” said Sydney, raising her eyes for the first time. “What’s most beautiful about you is your sensitiveness. If there’s one thing one might hope to learn from you it would be to be sickened and turned cold by cruelty and unfairness. I hope that’s what other people have learnt from you. I hope that’s what someone where you’re going next will be able to learn too.” Finding that her voice was still steady and clear and that she was able to go on she concluded, “I am very grateful to you; you have done a great deal for me.”

After a moment’s pause Mrs. Kerr said, with a glance through the curtains, “You do remember, don’t you, that Ronald’s on the balcony?”

“No, I haven’t forgotten Ronald.... Good-night, Mrs. Kerr. Good-night, Ronald!”

She turned and went back to the door, not quite directly, steering her way through the furniture as though she were carefully following back a chalk line drawn for her on the floor. While her hand was still on the door Mrs. Kerr exclaimed, “Sydney!” incredulously, then later, “Well, Sydney—what have I done?” Sydney did pause on the threshold and look back uncertainly, Mrs. Kerr held out a hand, then she turned again and went out, shutting the door behind her so quietly that Mrs. Kerr and Ronald only heard the latch click. Mrs. Kerr catching her breath at the sound of the latch, began repeating her name again in such a tone of desolation and loneliness that Ronald, driven out against something intolerable, rushed through the curtains.

“Why, _Mother_!”

“Make her come back. Go after her, Ronald, and make her come back—I have something to say to her.”

“I don’t see that I very well can.”

She stared up, arrested. “Why not?”

“Well, I don’t think she wants to.”

“Ronald....”

“I’m awfully sorry.” But his mother had turned away from him in contempt; her eyes were fixed on the door as though under their long, strange, relentless compulsion it must open again to deliver up Sydney. When he came forward she warded him off with a hand. He did not like to look at her and did not know where else to look, so he stumbled back on to the balcony where he found still alight a cigarette that he had taken out of his mouth an age ago and balanced aslant on the rail. He rolled it round between his fingers, considering it, took two or three puffs and threw it into the darkness, then remained standing still there, waiting to be called back. After waiting for some time his tension began to relax again, but looking round at the sky, the sea, the tops of the trees he still saw everywhere his mother’s head in the circle of light from the reading-lamp imprinted on the darkness.