To get away, to get right away from everything and everyone, with Stephen. Not to have to go back to London alone, to see what she could not, surely, bear to see—Barry and Gerda, Gerda and Barry, always, everywhere, radiant and in love. And Neville, Gerda’s mother, who saw so much. And Rosalind, who saw everything, everything, and said so. And Mrs. Hilary. …
To saunter round the queer, lovely corners of the earth with Stephen, light oneself by Stephen’s clear, flashing mind, look after Stephen’s weak, neglected body as he never could himself … that was the only anodyne. Life would then some time become an adventure again, a gay stroll through the fair, instead of a desperate sickness and nightmare.
Barry, oh Barry. … Nan, who had thought she was getting better, found that she was not. Tears stormed and shook her at last. She crumpled up on the floor among the galley-slips, her head upon the chair.
Those damned proofs—who wanted them? What were books? What was anything?
VI
Mrs. Hilary came in, in her dressing-gown, red-eyed. She had heard strangled sounds, and knew that her child was crying.
“My darling!”
Her arms were round Nan’s shoulders; she was kneeling among the proofs.
“My little girl—Nan!”
“Mother. …”
They held each other close. It was a queer moment, though not an unprecedented one in the stormy history of their relations together. A queer, strange, comforting, healing moment, the fleeting shadow of a great rock in a barren land; a strayed fragment of something which should have been between them always but was not. Certainly an odd moment.
“My own baby. … You’re unhappy. …”
“Unhappy—yes. … Darling mother, it can’t be helped. Nothing can be helped. … Don’t let’s talk … darling.”
Strange words from Nan. Strange for Mrs. Hilary to feel her hand held against Nan’s wet cheek and kissed.
Strange moment: and it could not last. The crying child wants its mother; the mother wants to comfort the crying child. A good bridge, but one inadequate for the strain of daily traffic. The child, having dried its tears, watches the bridge break again, and thinks it a pity but inevitable. The mother, less philosophic, may cry in her turn, thinking perhaps that the bridge may be built this time in that way; but, the child having the colder heart, it seldom is.
There remain the moments, impotent but indestructible.
XIV
Youth to Youth
I
Kay was home for the Christmas vacation. He was full, not so much of Cambridge, as of schemes for establishing a cooperative press next year. He was learning printing and binding, and wanted Gerda to learn too.
“Because, if you’re really not going to marry Barry, and if Barry sticks to not having you without, you’ll be rather at a loose end, won’t you, and you may as well come and help us with the press. … But of course, you know,” Kay added absently, his thoughts still on the press, “I should advise you to give up on that point.”
“Give up, Kay? Marry, do you mean?”
“Yes. … It doesn’t seem to me to be a point worth making a fuss about. Of course I agree with you in theory—I always have. But I’ve come to think lately that it’s not a point of much importance. And perfectly sensible people are doing it all the time. You know Jimmy Kenrick and Susan Mallow have done it? They used to say they wouldn’t, but they have. The fact is, people do do it, whatever they say about it beforehand. And though in theory it’s absurd, it seems often to work out pretty well in actual life. Personally I should make no bones about it, if I wanted a girl and she wanted marriage. Of course a girl can always go on being called by her own name if she likes. That has points.”
“Of course one could do that,” Gerda pondered.
“It’s a sound plan in some ways. It saves trouble and explanation to go on with the name you’ve published your things under before marriage. … By the way, what about your poems, Gerda? They’ll be about ready by the time we get our press going, won’t they? We can afford to have some slight stuff of that sort if we get hold of a few really good things to start with, to make our name.”
Gerda’s thoughts were not on her poems, nor on Kay’s press, but on his advice about matrimony. For the first time she wavered. If Kay thought that. … It set the business in a new light. And of course other people were doing it; sound people, the people who talked the same language and belonged to the same set as one’s self.
Kay had spoken. It was the careless, authentic voice of youth speaking to youth. It was a trumpet blast making a breach in the walls against which the batteries of middle age had thundered in vain. Gerda told herself that she must look further into this, think it over again, talk it over with other people of the age to know what was right. If it could be managed with honour, she would find it a great relief to give up on this point. For Barry was so firm; he would never give up; and, after all, one of them must, if it could be done with a clear conscience.
II
Ten days later Gerda said to Barry, “I’ve been thinking it over again, Barry, and I’ve decided that perhaps it will be all right for us to get married after all.”
Barry took both her hands and kissed each in turn, to show that he was not triumphing but adoring.
“You mean it? You feel you can really do it without violating your conscience? Sure, darling?”
“Yes, I think I’m sure. Lots of quite sensible, good people have done it lately.”
“Oh any number, of course—if that’s any reason.”
“Not, not those people. My sort of people, I mean. People who believe what I do, and wouldn’t tie themselves up
