world which had become, even since last night, much more frightful. Last night there had been horrors, but there had been a sense of drama, a feeling of obstacles to be overcome, and beyond it all the uplifting certainty of her love. Today I felt crazy with doubt and fear. She was only a young girl after all. Could she, against such fierce parental opposition, hold to her faith and keep her vision clear? And if they had lied to me about her was it not likely that they had lied to her about me? They would tell her that I had said I would give her up. And I had said it. Would she understand? Would she be strong enough to go on believing in me? How strong was she? How little in fact I knew her. Was it really all in my mind? And supposing they took her away? Supposing I really could not find her? Surely she would write to me. But supposing she did not? Perhaps, although she did love me, she had decided that the whole thing was a mistake? That would, after all, be a thoroughly rational decision.
The telephone rang but it was only Francis asking me to come and see Priscilla. I said I would come later. I asked to talk to her but she would not come to the telephone. About ten Christian rang and I put the receiver back at once. I rang the Ealing number but got «number unobtainable» again. Arnold must have somehow put the telephone out of action during that period of panic in the afternoon. I prowled about the house wondering how long I could put off the moment when it would be impossible not to go to Ealing. My head was aching terribly. I did try quite hard during this time to put my thoughts in order. I speculated about my intentions and her feelings. I sketched plans for a dozen or so different turns of events. I even tried to feign imagining what it would be like really to despair: that is, to believe that she did not love me, had never loved me, and that all I could decently do was to vanish from her life. Then I realized that I did despair, I was in despair, nothing could be worse than this experience of her absence and her silence. And yesterday she had been in my arms and we had looked forward into a huge quiet abyss of time, and we had kissed each other without frenzy and without terror, with thoughtful temperate quiet joy. And I had even sent her away when she did not want to go. I had been insane. Perhaps that was the only time which we should ever, ever have together. Perhaps it was something which would never, never, never come again.
Waiting in fear is surely one of the most awful of human tribulations. The wife at the pit head. The prisoner awaiting interrogation. The shipwrecked man on the raft in the empty sea. The sheer extension of time is felt then as physical anguish. The minutes, each of which might bring relief, or at least certainty, pass fruitlessly and manufacture an increase of horror. As the minutes of that morning passed away I felt a cold deadly increase of my conviction that all was lost. This was how it would be from now on and forever. She would never communicate with me again. I endured this until half past eleven and then I decided I must go to Ealing and try to see her by force if necessary. I even thought of arming myself with some weapon. But suppose she was already gone?
It had begun to rain. I had put on my macintosh and was standing in the hall wondering if tears would help. I imagined pushing Arnold violently aside and leaping up the stairs. But what then?
The telephone rang and I lifted it. The voice of an operator said, «Miss Baffin is calling you from an Ealing call box, will you pay for the call?»
«What? Is that-?»
«Miss Baffin is calling you-«
«Yes, yes, I'll pay, yes-«Bradley. It's me.»
«Oh darling-Oh thank God-«Bradley, quickly, I must see you, I've run away.»
«Oh good, oh my darling, I've been in such a-«Me too. Look, I'm in a telephone box near Ealing Broadway station, I haven't any money.»
«I'll come and fetch you in a taxi.»
«I'll hide in a shop, I'm so terrified of-«Oh my darling girl-«Tell the taxi to drive slowly past the station, I'll see you.»
«Yes, yes.»
«But, Bradley, we can't be at your place, that's where they'll go.»
«Never mind them. I'm coming to fetch you.»
«What happened?»
«Oh, Bradley, it's been such a nightmare «But what happened?»
«I was an absolute idiot, I told them all about it in a sort of triumphant aggressive way, I felt so happy, I couldn't conceal it or muffle it, and they were livid, at least at first they simply couldn't believe it, and then they rushed off to see you, and I should have run away then, only I was feeling sort of combative and I wanted another session and then when they came back they were much worse, I've never seen my father so upset and angry, he was quite violent.»
«God, he didn't beat you?»
«No, no, but he shook me till I was quite giddy and he broke a lot of things in my room-«Oh my sweet-«Then I started to cry and couldn't stop.»
«Yes, when I came round-«
«You came round?»
«They didn't tell you?»
«Dad said later on that he'd seen you again. He said you'd agreed to give it all up. I didn't believe him of course.»
«Oh my brave dear! He told me you didn't want to see me. Of course I didn't believe him either.»
She said, «I love my parents. I suppose. Well, of course I do. Especially my father. Anyway I've never doubted it. But there are things one can't forgive. It's the end of something. And the beginning of something.» She turned to me with gravity, her face very tired, a little puffy and battered and creased with much crying, and grim too. One saw what she would look like when she was fifty. And for an instant her unforgiving face reminded me of Rachel in the terrible room.
«Oh Julian, I've brought irrevocable things to you.»
«Yes.»
«I haven't wrecked your life, have I, you aren't angry with me for having involved you in such trouble?»
«That's your silliest remark yet. Anyway, the row went on for hours, mainly between me and my father, and then when my mother started in he shouted that she was jealous of me, and she shouted that he was in love with me, and then she started to cry and I screamed, and, oh Bradley, I didn't know ordinary educated middle-class English people could behave the way we behaved last night.»
«That shows how young you are.»
«At last they went off downstairs and I could hear them going on rowing down there, and my mother crying terribly, and I decided I'd had enough and I'd clear out, and then I found they'd locked me in! I'd never been locked in anywhere, even when I was small, I can't tell you how-it was a sort of moment of-illumination-like when people suddenly know-they've got to have a revolution. I was just eternally not going to stand for being locked in.»
«You shouted and banged?»
«No, nothing like that. I knew I couldn't get out of the window, it's too high. I sat on my bed and I cried a lot of course. You know, it seems silly in the middle of all this real sort of-carnage-but I was so sad about the little things of mine my father broke. He broke two sort of cups and all my china animals-«Julian, I can't bear this-«And it was so frightening-and sort of humiliating-He didn't find this, though, it was under my pillow.» Julian took out of the pocket of her dress the gilt snuffbox, A Friend's Gift.
«Bradley, we passed this stage long ago. When I was sitting on my bed and looking at the broken china on the floor and feeling my life so broken, I felt so strong too and calm in the middle of it all and quite certain about you and quite certain about myself. Look at me. Certainty. Calm.» She did look calm too, sitting there beside me with her weary lucid face and her blue dress with white willow leaves on it and her brown shiny young knees and our hands piled together on her lap and the gilt snuffbox in the loop of her skirt.
«You must have more time to think, we can't-«Anyway, about eleven, and that was another last straw, I had to shout and beg them to let me out to go to the lavatory. Then my father came in again and started off on a new tack, being very kind and understanding. It was then he said that he'd seen you again and that you'd said you'd give me up, which of course I knew wasn't true. And then he said he'd take me to Athens-«He told me Venice. I've been in Venice all night.»
«He was afraid you'd follow. I was as cold as ice by this time and I'd already made a plan to pretend to agree with anything he said and then to escape as soon as I could. So I acted a climb-down and how a treat like going to Athens made all the difference and-thank God you weren't listening-and-«I know. I did the same. I actually did tell him I'd sheer off. I felt like Saint Peter.»
