Having put her hand on the clue, she ceased to be interested in the exhibition. It was, in fact, no more and no less interesting than if it had been their children. Most sorts of love were rather dull, to the spectator. Pamela and Frances were all right; decent people, not sloppy, not gushing, but fine and direct and keen, though rather boring when they began to talk to each other about some silly old thing that had happened in their last year at Oxford, or their first year, or on some reading party. Some people relive their lives like this; others pass on their way, leaving the past behind. They were all right, Pamela and Frances. But all this mothering. …
Yet how happy they were, these two, in their useful, competent work and devoted friendship. They had achieved contacts with life, permanent contacts. Pamela, in spite of her neuralgia, expressed calm and entirely unbumptious attainment, Nan feverish seeking. For Nan’s contacts with life were not permanent, but suddenly vivid and passing; the links broke and she flew off at a tangent. Nan had lately been taken with a desperate fear of becoming like her mother, when she was old and couldn’t write any more, or love any more men. Horrible thought, to be like Mrs. Hilary, roaming, questing, feverishly devoured by her own impatience of life. …
In here it was cool and calm, soft and blurred with the smoke of their cigarettes. Frances Carr left them to talk, telling them not to be late. When she had gone, Pamela said “I thought you were still down at Windover, Nan.”
“Left it on Saturday. … Mother and Grandmama had been there a week. I couldn’t stick it any longer. Mother was outrageously jealous, of course.”
“Neville and Grandmama? Poor mother.”
“Oh yes, poor mother. But it gets on my nerves. Neville’s an angel. I can’t think how she sticks it. For that matter, I never know how she puts up with Rodney’s spoilt fractiousness. … And altogether life was a bit of a strain … no peace. And I wanted some peace and solitude, to make up my mind in.”
“Are you making it up now?” Pamela, mildly interested, presumed it was a man.
“Trying to. It isn’t made yet. That’s why I roam about your horrible slums in the dark. I’m considering; getting things into focus. Seeing them all round.”
“Well, that sounds all right.”
“Pam.” Nan leant forward abruptly, her cigarette between two brown fingers. “Are you happy? Do you enjoy your life?”
Pamela withdrew, lightly, inevitably, behind guards.
“Within reason, yes. When committees aren’t too tiresome, and the accounts balance, and. …”
“Oh, give me a straight answer, Pam. You dependable, practical people are always frivolous about things that matter. Are you happy? Do you feel right-side-up with life?”
“In the main—yes.” Pamela was more serious this time. “One’s doing one’s job, after all. And human beings are interesting.”
“But I’ve got that too. My job, and human beings. … Why do I feel all tossed about, like a boat on a choppy sea? Oh, I know life’s furiously amusing and exciting—of course it is. But I want something solid. You’ve got it, somehow.”
Nan broke off and thought “It’s Frances Carr she’s got. That’s permanent. That goes on. Pamela’s anchored. All these people I have—these men and women—they’re not anchors, they’re stimulants, and how different that is!”
They looked at each other in silence. Pamela said then, “You don’t look well, child.”
“Oh—” Nan threw her cigarette end impatiently into the grate. “I’m all right. I’m tired, and I’ve been thinking too much. That never suits me. … Thanks, Pam. You’ve helped me to make up my mind. I like you, Pam,” she added dispassionately, “because you’re so gentlewomanly. You don’t ask questions, or pry. Most people do.”
“Surely not. Not most decent people.”
“Most people aren’t decent. You think they are. You’ve not lived in my set—nor in Rosalind’s. You’re still fresh from Oxford—stuck all over with Oxford manners and Oxford codes. You don’t know the raddled gossip who fishes for your secrets and then throws them about for fun, like tennis balls.”
“I know Rosalind, thank you, Nan.”
“Oh, Rosalind’s not the only one, though she’ll do. Anyhow I’ve trapped you into saying an honest and unkind thing about her, for once; that’s something. Wish you weren’t such a dear old fraud, Pammie.”
Frances Carr came back, in her dressing gown, looking about twenty-three, her brown hair in two plaits.
“Pamela, you mustn’t sit up any more. I’m awfully sorry, Nan, but her head. …”
“Right oh. I’m off. Sorry I’ve kept you up, Pammie. Good night. Good night, Frances. Yes, I shall get the bus at the corner. Good night.”
The door closed after Nan, shutting in the friends and their friendship and their anchored peace.
III
Off went Nan on the bus at the corner, whistling softly into the night. Like a bird her heart rose up and sang, at the lit pageant of London swinging by. Queer, fantastic, most lovely life! Sordid, squalid, grotesque life, bitter as black tea, sour as stale wine! Gloriously funny, brilliant as a flowerbed, bright as a Sitwell street in hell—
“(Down in Hell’s gilded street
Snow dances fleet and sweet,
Bright as a parakeet. …)”
unsteady as a swing-boat, silly as a drunkard’s dream, tragic as a poem by Massfield. … To have one’s corner in it, to run here and there about the city, grinning like a dog—what more did one want? Human adventures, intellectual adventures, success, even a little fame, men and women, jokes, laughter and love, dancing and a little drink, and the fields and mountains and seas beyond—what more did one want?
Roots. That was the metaphor that had eluded Nan. To be rooted and grounded in life, like a tree. Someone had written something about that.
“Let your manhood be
Forgotten, your whole purpose seem
The purpose of a simple tree
Rooted in a quiet dream. …”
Roots. That was what Neville had, what Pamela had; Pamela, with her sensible wisdom that so often didn’t apply because Pamela was so far removed from Nan’s conditions of life
