Dangerous Ages Part 32

Mrs. Hilary sat in another arm-chair, surrounded by bad novels, as if she had been a reviewer. She was regarding them, too, with something of the reviewer's pained and inimical distaste, dipping now into one, shutting it with a sharp sigh, trying another; flinging it on the floor with an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of anger and fatigue.

Grandmama woke with a start, and said "What fell? Did something fall?"

and adjusted her gla.s.ses and opened the Autobiography again.

"A sadly vulgar, untruthful and ill-written book. The sort of autobiography Gilbert's wife will write when she has time. It reminds me very much of her letters, and is, I am sure, still more like the diary which she no doubt keeps. Poor Gilbert...." Grandmama seemed to be confusing Gilbert momentarily with the Cabinet Minister. "I remember,"

she went on, "meeting this young woman at Oxford, in the year of the first Jubilee.... A very bright talker. They can so seldom write...." She dozed again.

"Will this intolerable day," Mrs. Hilary enquired of the housemaid who came in to make up the fire, "never be over? I suppose it will be bed-time _some time_...."

"It's just gone a quarter past six, ma'am," said the housemaid, offering little hope, and withdrew.

Mrs. Hilary went to the window and drew back the curtains and looked out at Marine Crescent in the gloomy, rainy twilight. The long evening stretched in front of her--the long evening which she had never learnt to use. Psycho-a.n.a.lysis, which had made her so much better while the course lasted, now that it was over (and it was too expensive to go on with forever) had left her worse than before. She was like a drunkard deprived suddenly of stimulants; she had nothing to turn to, no one now who took an interest in her soul. She missed Mr. Cradock and that bi-weekly hour; she was like a creeper wrenched loose from its support and flung flat on the ground. He had given her mental exercises and told her to continue them; but she had always hated mental exercises; you might as well go in for the Pelman course and have done. What one needed was a _person_. She was left once more face to face with time, the enemy; time, which gave itself to her lavishly with both hands when she had no use for it. There was nothing she wanted to do with time, except kill it.

"What, dear?" murmured Grandmama, as she rattled the blind ta.s.sel against the sill. "How about a game of piquet?"

But Mrs. Hilary hated piquet, and all card games, and halma, and dominoes, and everything. Grandmama used to have friends in to play with her, or the little maid. This evening she rang for the little maid, May, who would rather have been writing to her young man, but liked to oblige the nice old lady, of whom the kitchen was fond.

It was all very well for Grandmama, Mrs. Hilary thought, stormily revolting against that placidity by the hearth. All very well for Grandmama to sit by the fire contented with books and papers and games and sleep, unbitten by the murderous hatred of time that consumed herself. Everyone always thought that about Grandmama, that things were all very well for her, and perhaps they were. For time could do little more hurt to Grandmama. She need not worry about killing time; time would kill her soon enough, if she left it alone. Time, so long to Mrs. Hilary, was short now to Grandmama, and would soon be gone. As to May, the little maid, to her time was fleeting, and flew before her face, like a bird she could never catch....

Grandmama and May were playing casino. A bitter game, for you build and others take, and your labour is but lost that builded; you sow and others reap. But Grandmama and May were both good-tempered and ladylike. They played prettily together, age and youth.

Why did life play one these tricks, Mrs. Hilary cried within herself.

What had she done to life, that it should have deserted her and left her stranded on the sh.o.r.es of a watering-place, empty-handed and pitiful, alone with time the enemy, and with Grandmama, for whom it was all very well?

2

In the Crescent music blared out--once more the Army, calling for strayed sheep in the rain.

"Glory for you, glory for me!" it shouted. And then, presently:

"Count--your--blessings! Count them one by one!

And it will _surprise_ you what the Lord has done!"

Grandmama, as usual, was beating time with her hand on the arm of her chair.

"Detestable creatures," said Mrs. Hilary, with acrimony, as usual.

"But a very racy tune, my dear," said Grandmama, placidly, as usual.

"Blood! Blood!" sang the Army, exultantly, as usual.

May looked happy, and her attention strayed from the game. The Army was one of the joys, one of the comic turns, of this watering-place.

"Six and two are eight," said Grandmama, and picked them up, recalling May's attention. But she herself still beat time to the merry music-hall tune and the ogreish words.

Grandmama could afford to be tolerant, as she sat there, looking over the edge into eternity, with Time, his fangs drawn, stretched sleepily behind her back. Time, who flew, bird-like, before May's pursuing feet; time, who stared balefully into Mrs. Hilary's face, returning hate for hate, rested behind Grandmama's back like a faithful steed who had carried her thus far and whose service was nearly over.

The Army moved on; its music blared away into the distance. The rain beat steadily on wet asphalt roads; the edge of the cold sea tumbled and moaned; the noise of the fire flickering was like unsteady breathing, or the soft fluttering of wings.

"Time is so long," thought Mrs. Hilary. "I can't bear it."

"Time gets on that quick," thought May. "I can't keep up with it."

"Time is dead," thought Grandmama. "What next?"

CHAPTER XVII

THE KEY

1

Not Grandmama's and not Neville's should be, after all, the last word, but Pamela's. Pamela, who seemed lightly, and as it were casually, to swing a key to the door against which Neville, among many others, beat; Pamela, going about her work, keen, debonair and detached, ironic, cool and quiet, responsive to life and yet a thought disdainful of it, lightly holding and easily renouncing; the world's lover, yet not its servant, her foot at times carelessly on its neck to prove her power over it--Pamela said blandly to Grandmama, when the old lady commented one day on her admirable composure, "Life's so short, you see. Can anything which lasts such a little while be worth making a fuss about?"

"Ah," said Grandmama, "that's been my philosophy for ten years ... only ten years. You've no business with it at your age, child."

"Age," returned Pamela, negligent and cool, "has extremely little to do with anything that matters. The difference between one age and another is, as a rule, enormously exaggerated. How many years we've lived on this ridiculous planet--how many more we're going to live on it--what a trifle! Age is a matter of exceedingly little importance."

"And so, you would imply, is everything else on the ridiculous planet,"

said Grandmama, shrewdly. Pamela smiled, neither affirming nor denying.

Lightly the key seemed to swing from her open hand.

"I certainly don't see quite what all the fuss is about," said Pamela.