Return I Dare Not Read online

  But no sound came from the astonished room behind him. They might both have fainted, they were so quiet. And, just when he was wondering what he ought to do next, a fresh torrent of music flowed on to the terrace. He crept back on tiptoe to look. Philomena had disappeared and Corny, still with a very red nose, was executing a Bach Prelude. There would be no duel this time.

  He went into the hall to get a drink and found Solange putting away the basket and the scissors. She said:

  “Where have you been?”

  And he said:

  “Listening to Corny.”

  “Isn’t he clever?” said Solange admiringly. “I didn’t know he could play Augustus Harris.”

  “Play what?”

  “That fugue. At school we used to call it Augustus Harris. Because of the rhythm. It says:

  ‘AuGUStus Har-ris

  Caught a FLEA in his COFF-ee.’ ”

  “Where’s Marianne?”

  “Gone to bed. Thanks. I’ll have some lemonade.”

  They sipped and listened to Corny playing Augustus Harris. Solange looked thoughtful. Presently she asked if he had had a row with Marianne at dinner.

  “I don’t know,” said Hugo. “It isn’t finished yet. I’m sorry she’s gone to bed.”

  Solange pondered again. She made up her mind.

  “I don’t think she has gone to bed, as a matter of fact. She’s gone up on to the downs.”

  “Oh.”

  He finished his drink and wandered out into the garden again. Solange tip-toed to the door to watch him. As soon as he had got off the terrace and believed himself to be unobserved he set off down the garden at a great rate. She smiled to herself, looked doubtful, and then smiled again as she went up to bed.

  25. Michal.

  “But Gibbie … Gibbie …”

  “It’s no use, Philomena.”

  “Can’t you understand that it’s all over. I’ve given it up. Nothing’s happened. Don’t look at me so angrily. I’ve done you no wrong.”

  “Yes, you have. You’ve made a fool of me.”

  “I’ve always been quite frank with you.”

  “That has nothing to do with it. You’ve made a fool of me.”

  “How?”

  “To him. And you can’t undo that. First you’ll go. And then you won’t go. What does he think I am?”

  “Gibbie! Don’t be childish. I’ve done nothing.”

  “Nothing? You’ve only told him and God knows whom else that I can’t keep you in order …”

  “Keep me in order. I’m not a child.”

  “You behave like one.”

  Philomena sat down in front of her dressing-table and buried her face in her hands. She felt that it ought to be quite easy to dispose of Gibbie, but she was shaken by that awful, outrageous scene downstairs. She must have a little time for recovery before she could deal with this new mood of Gibbie’s.

  “Let’s talk about it when we go home,” she said faintly. “I’m too tired. I can’t go into it to-night.”

  “But I’m not going home. I’ve told you. I’m not going to live with you again.”

  “You’re mad. I’ve done nothing. I’ve been absolutely faithful.”

  “That has nothing to do with it. Plenty of men can manage to be happy with unfaithful wives. But nobody can live with a woman who makes a laughing stock of him. At least you might have kept up the decent fiction that I’d kick him if I found out.”

  “Oh well. Forget it. You’ve not been the only person to suffer, I can assure you.”

  Gibbie shook his head stubbornly.

  “You don’t understand, Philomena. I’ve been thinking it out all day. I’ve been trying to get it clear.”

  “That you weren’t going to let me go, you mean? Well, I’m not going and that’s that.”

  “No. Your going has nothing to do with it really. You can go or not as you please. I’m not going to live with you any more.”

  “But what have I done?”

  “You’ve wrecked our marriage. That’s what you’ve done. You’ve made it impossible for me to respect myself. You don’t seem to understand in the least what a man expects from his wife. He doesn’t merely want a sort of permanent concubine. He wants a woman who’ll share whatever prestige, standing, honour … you can call it what you like … that he’s been able to win for himself out of the pack. That’s why she takes his name.

  “He has to trust her. She gets to know things about him. She knows his weaknesses. But as long as she helps him to keep his own end up she’s a good wife …”

  “You talk as if I’d given you nothing. I’ve had your children. I’ve taken risks for you. I’ve loved you.”

  “A mistress might do that much. That’s a matter of our private life. It’s our public life I’m talking about. Marriage is a public contract. You’ve let me down.”

  Even yet she could not take him seriously. His manner was too didactic. He was off again on his eternal theorising. A man who is about to break up his home does not trouble to distinguish between the private and the public life. She shrugged her shoulders.

  “You’ve argued yourself into thinking that you ought to leave me. A nice point in moral philosophy. For once you’ve decided what the Good Man does.”

  “Yes,” agreed Gibbie. “For once I have decided that.”

  “But you’ve forgotten one thing.”

  “What?”

  “That you love me.”

  “No. I haven’t forgotten that. I do love you, unfortunately. But I’m going to leave you for all that. Too much can be sacrificed for love.”

  “Oh Gibbie!”

  It was nonsense, but his air of resolution began to frighten her. That solid structure of home, marriage and security, which she herself had always put first, must not be attacked, even in theory.

  “Please don’t say such things. I can’t bear it.”

  “I want you to understand why it is that I can’t forgive you. You thought you knew how to get round me, and you very nearly did. But you oughtn’t to have told him. If you’d simply deceived me I shouldn’t feel that you had brought me so low.”

  “Please, Gibbie …”

  She got up and would have gone to him, but he held her off.

  “It’s no use, Philomena. I know my own mind now. I ought to have known it yesterday, I admit. But you did try to rush me, didn’t you?”

  “But Gibbie … Gibbie …”

  He turned away from her and went into his dressing-room. The manuscript which he had been trying to read lay strewn about on the writing-table. He switched on the reading lamp and picked up the next chapter.

  “Poor thing,” he thought. “She didn’t understand a single word that I said.”

  To-morrow he would go to sleep at his club until their separation could be arranged. And after that he did not know what he would do. But a kind of triumph upheld him. He had for once made his decision by the light of reason, as all decisions ought to be made. He had argued out his case with himself as though it belonged to another man. And now he had only to act upon it. Having once acted he believed that his whole life would become quite different. He would himself be the Good Man.

  26. Springs in Deserts Found.

  The night grew warmer and brighter. Each rounded cock in the hayfields had its own blot of shadow. There was no sleep indoors or out. Small things rustled and twittered in the black thickets and a million grasshoppers were sawing away in the fields. Yet every sound was slight and clear, etched distinctly against the large quietness of the sky and the hills. Noises from far away, a dog barking from an upland farm, a car changing gear in the valley, fell into the cup of fields like single notes from a bell.

  Hugo’s moon shadow dogged him through the fields and at first he hurried and stumbled as though he was trying to escape from it. But when he came to the gate on to the downs he went more slowly. The hill grew steeper. Gradually, as each step took him out of the human world of the valley, all sound slipped away from him. His breath ret
urned and his heart left off hammering. He fell into a steady plod up the chalk path to the crest of the ridge. Soon he could hear nothing save the ghost of a whisper as a small wind blew among the dried harebells. The air was cooler up there, but a lingering warmth stole from the earth which had lain baking in the sun all day.

  He got to the top and saw more, and yet more sky. Half the world was sky, and when he looked back he could not see the Ullmer valley, only a smudge of blackness below the silvery slopes. He stood still and his shadow stood still beside him. He had got to a place of absolute silence.

  It was too silent.

  A strange thing had happened to him, but he did not immediately know what it was. His private orchestra had stopped. For the first time in years he was able to listen to his own thoughts, to that secret voice which he shared with no one else. He had given his tyrant the slip and was walking alone with his shadow as anybody else might walk. He need no longer think of himself as the most successful young man who ever wandered in the moonlight.

  But he was not ready, yet, to be alone. His success might be a tyrant but at least it was company and he had come to depend on it. He had not stumbled up this hill for the sake of solitude but because he wanted to find Marianne. For he must sleep soon, and he never could until he found her. When Solange said that she was on the downs he had gone in immediate pursuit. Not to argue, or to explain, did he go, but simply to be with her. For he knew that he had come very near the edge, down there in the drawing-room with Corny and Philomena. He was very near the edge still. He would go over if he did not find her.

  There was no sign of her anywhere. The night was empty and the downs were bare. He went on a little way, scanning the faint, grey levels for her moving figure. But it seemed that she was not there. And then his loneliness grew to panic size. He began to hurry. He tried to get off the downs and lost himself. The Ullmer valley had disappeared, but he slipped and stumbled a little way down into another one, looking for the path that he had missed. A sea of gorse bushes cut him off and he tried to crawl through them, gashing his hands and arms. At last he got to the top of the ridge again, where his moon shadow dodged and bobbed beside him. It looked like a shadow cast by some other man and he grew afraid of it. At last, blindly terrified, he began to run, round in circles, and up and down over the grass, trying to find some shelter from the cold eye of the moon. But there was no refuge, even from that, only endless miles of turf full of rabbit holes that tripped him up. His shouts and calls were muffled in his throat and choked him. He went round and round like a squirrel in a cage.

  When he had run for a long time he was walking again with Marianne beside him. She seemed to have come suddenly out of nowhere, to have taken shape out of the void sky. The moon glistened on the white frieze coat that she wore, and her lanky shadow stalked along the ground beside his. She had taken his arm, as they swung along, and tucked it under her own, thus preventing him from falling into rabbit holes as they took the path along the top of the ridge.

  “Where were you?” he asked when they had gone a little way.

  “Up there.”

  She nodded at the great mound of Chawton Beacon, looming above them.

  “Did you see me?”

  “No. But I heard you calling.”

  “Oh. Did I call?”

  “Yes.”

  “More than once?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was I calling you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You must have thought I was getting queer in the head.”

  She did not answer that. Instead she pointed across the valley and said:

  “Look!”

  On the slope opposite a flame had spread out like a fan. The whole hillside was burning.

  “They’ve lighted the grass,” she said. “Look, there’s another on Chawbury. And a little one on Callow Down. And do you see the one on Ullmer Ridge? They light it there in a ring and if it burns all the way round at the same time, then it’s going to be a lucky year. But it’s better when there’s no moon.”

  They went along the ridge counting the fires, of which there were about a dozen. Hidden in the hills there must have been scores of men setting the grass alight and a faint shout floated now and then across the valley. Marianne kept spinning round and naming the more distant flickers. For the most part they looked wan and ephemeral under the steady light of the moon. But Ullmer Ring burnt bravely long after the others had gone out.

  “We might go across and help them to keep it up,” she suggested. “Why are you limping?”

  “I’ve got a blister on my heel. I don’t want to walk any more. Let’s sit down.”

  “It’ll be cold here by and by. We’ll go along to the haystacks and then we’ll have something to lean against.”

  “Where?”

  “Just below here. Where the fields run up to the Down. There are two stacks. We can sit against them and see Ullmer Ring as long as it burns. Mind the rabbit holes.”

  They went down, slipping a little on the cropped turf, and Hugo asked where Syranwood was. She pointed to an enormous mass of shadow like a dark lake, just below them.

  “You know,” said Hugo, as he slithered along, “I did an extraordinary thing to-night. I pulled Corny’s nose.”

  “Did you? Oh, look out! Have you sprained your ankle?”

  He had stepped into a rabbit burrow and fell sprawling.

  “Why didn’t you put on thick shoes if you wanted to come up here?” asked Marianne unsympathetically.

  “I didn’t want to come up here. Did you hear what I said? I pulled …”

  “Yes, you can tell me when we’re safe at the bottom.”

  “Should I try rolling down?”

  “You could if you liked. But if I were you I’d take my shoes off. The grass is quite dry.”

  Hugo sat down and removed his shoes and socks. The grass was not only dry but warm, and his feet gripped it comfortably. But he encountered a good many thistles.

  “I believe you take me over them on purpose,” he grumbled.

  “It’s better than gorse. Here we are.”

  The haystacks leant together like two little houses. But one of them had been cut on the side facing Ullmer Ridge and Marianne scooped out a nice warm hollow in the loose hay. It was soft to sit in but it tickled Hugo’s feet until he had to put his shoes on again.

  “Now are you settled?” demanded Marianne.

  “More or less. How long are we going to stay here?”

  “I’m going to stay till the Ring is burnt out. But you needn’t unless you like.”

  He did like. As far as he was concerned they could sit there all night. For it was still quite early. As they came down the hill he had heard the stable clock striking twelve among the trees below.

  “Do you mind if I go to sleep?” he asked.

  “Do.”

  He stretched himself at full length in the hay and stared up at the sky.

  “Why aren’t there any stars?” he asked presently.

  “Because it’s a full moon. There never are.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Go to sleep.”

  “I can’t. The hay scratches my neck.”

  He shuffled and fidgeted about for a few minutes and then sat up. Marianne, who had been watching him, said gravely:

  “You can put your head on my lap if you like.”

  “Can I?”

  He did, and sighed with contentment.

  “I’m so comfortable.”

  Marianne said nothing. She looked straight in front of her at the uncertain ring of fire across the valley. And after a little while Hugo went on, in a placid, drowsy voice:

  “You know, Marianne, I can’t bear it any longer.”

  “I know.”

  “You don’t know. You couldn’t. Nobody could unless it had happened to them. I’m like a man driving some terrible, high-powered car and losing control of it. He tries to think, poor devil, that he’s driving it. But all the time he knows it’s driv
ing him.”

  He spoke slowly, pausing for words, as if at any moment he might drop off to sleep. But he went on:

  “Something outside of me has got hold of me. I’m a slave. Even my thoughts aren’t my own any more. I haven’t got a private life any more. I always seem to be leading a public life, even when I’m alone. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “My mind is simply an enormous reverberator for other people’s thoughts. I’m hardly a real person any more. The nearest to reality I get is to give a marvellous imitation of myself.”

  Marianne moved, as though she was going to speak. But he stopped her.

  “I know what you’re going to say. Why not go away? I’ll tell you why. There’s nowhere to go to. People can’t get away nowadays. Wherever I went, they’d come too. Nothing will make any difference. I’d thought of trying something new: writing poetry instead of plays. But I hadn’t considered the idea for more than ten minutes before I found myself telling Adrian all about it. Doing a little advance publicity. When a man gets into the state I’m in he can only produce abortions. When things grow you have to hide the roots of them. But I’ve got nowhere to hide them in.”

  “I know,” said Marianne. “So if I were you I shouldn’t write any more.”

  “What?”

  He turned his head round on her knee and peered up into her face to see if she was laughing. But she looked quite serious.

  “How do you mean … not write?”

  “Do something else,” suggested Marianne.

  “But, my dear, I’m a writer. What else could I do?”

  “Anything else. Anything you like. Why not? If anybody could do what they liked I should think it was you. You must have made an awful lot of money.”

  “Not as much as people think,” said Hugo instantly.

  “But still, quite a lot. Have you spent it all?”

  “No. I’ve saved enough to live on, if it comes to that.”

  “Then, my goodness, why go on doing things you don’t like. Plenty of people that don’t have any money at all have a nicer time than you. Why should you go on writing?”

  “I’ve got into a habit.”