Return I Dare Not Read online

  “It’s a bad habit.”

  “And then, you can’t get away from it. I’m so successful. To leave off writing altogether, to give up, that would be failure, wouldn’t it?”

  “Well?”

  She seemed to scrutinise the word as if trying to discover the secret of its menace. And Hugo lay there wondering idly what he would like to do besides writing. He might sail a small boat perhaps. He liked sailing.

  “Well,” pronounced Marianne at last, “you’ve tried success and you don’t like it. Now try failure and see.”

  It was absurd. He left off toying with his little boat.

  “But darling … what am I to do with my life?”

  “Oh I don’t know. Just live it. Do nothing at all for a good long time, till you find there’s something you really and truly want to do. Don’t you realise how lucky you are? You’re free. You don’t have your living to earn. And you quite like doing nothing, don’t you?”

  “Do I? I don’t know. I’ve done nothing this week-end, but I can’t say I’ve liked it.”

  “Done nothing? You’ve been at it the whole time, I should say.”

  Hugo considered this but found no answer. So he went back to the impossibility of getting away.

  “Darling, you don’t know what you’re talking about. My agent would never allow it. I’m afraid of my agent.”

  Marianne made a movement of impatience. It was a hard task to disentangle his mind from its mesh of publicity.

  “Nobody need know,” she insisted. “Give an address to your bankers or your solicitor or somebody like that, so they won’t think you’ve fallen off a cliff. And then disappear.”

  “Where to?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I should go to a cheap hotel at Torquay or somewhere for a bit till you’ve thought of a place you’d like. Nobody would think of looking for you at Torquay.”

  “You’ve got it all very pat. Have you been thinking it over?”

  “Yes, I have. Ever since dinner.”

  “Nice of you. But you know there’ll be an awful hullabaloo. Disappearance of Hugo Pott.”

  “Oh no, not if you say you’ve gone a pleasure cruise. You’ve no idea how quickly they’ll forget you. They’ll say: ‘Oh, by the way, where’s Hugo? Still cruising?’ And then they’ll leave off even saying that. They’ll find another King Toad to …”

  She broke off with a gasp.

  “Go on,” murmured Hugo contentedly. “I don’t mind. A King Toad, did you say? So that’s what you really …”

  And then, thinking of his arrival, and those two faces looking down at him from the old schoolroom window, he laughed.

  “I didn’t really …” stammered Marianne.

  “Oh yes, you did. And you wouldn’t tell me at dinner. You think I’m a King Toad, Marianne, but you’re terribly nice to me all the same, and in three minutes I shall go to sleep on your lap. Do you mind?”

  “No.”

  And in three minutes he did, slipping off suddenly into that dreamless void which he had so desperately desired. He lay absolutely still, breathing slowly.

  Marianne settled herself more comfortably into the hay and leant back. She watched the fires die out, one after another, and heard the stable clock chime out beneath her. The night was a little cooler now and as the moon slipped down the sky it grew darker.

  She was so completely happy that she had almost left off being herself. The barrier between herself and everything round her, the dark cooling air, the huddled stacks, crumbled away, so that her peace was one with the peace of the sleeping world. This was her whole life, since an entire existence is no longer than its moment of highest fulfilment. She knew that when she was old she would not think: I have lived long. She would think: ‘He slept one night with me in the hay.’ She held his sleeping spirit in her hands and she was content.

  To-morrow he would go away. And perhaps she might never have him near to her like this again. Tomorrow night, and for many, many nights after she must lie alone with her grief. He would be lost to her arms but never to her love. For her love would send him out, away from her, just as, to-night, it had brought him close. To-morrow and its loss would be born of this happiness just as surely as light follows darkness and sweet flowers bear bitter fruit. But in this hour, when all time seemed one, she could think of it without sorrow.

  The moon had slipped out of sight. Its milky beams grew dim and the outline of the hills disappeared as it set. All the fires were out now. Hugo lay still as death, but when she moved a little, to ease her cramped limbs, he sighed and said something about ringing up in the morning.

  His head rolled off her lap but he did not wake. Very softly she lay down in the hay beside him, took him in her arms and pulled his poor head into that hollow of her breast where it ought to lie. In a few minutes she was fast asleep herself.

  27. Open the Door.

  The silent pageant of night and day streamed past them unseen. For a time there was nothing, no colour and no shape, while the unlit world swung over in the void. And then a faint ray, distilled from the east, turned nothingness into a dark pearl. Marianne dozed fitfully, floating on the tide of her happiness in and out of sleep. But Hugo lay all night long in a profound repose. Once she woke to see the morning star hanging over Ullmer Ridge and then she slept again while the light grew and the grey fields found their shapes. She was still asleep when the first banners of colour were flung up into the sky and Hugo started, broad awake, as if he had been summoned.

  He sat up and took a deep slow breath, smelling the early morning air. An extraordinary feeling of newness infused his body, as if he had been taken to pieces and put together again during the night. He looked about him in a puzzled way, at the colourless fields and the pearly sky and Marianne’s grave, sleeping face. Fragments of their conversation came back to him, confused with many things that he might possibly have dreamt. He had been in great distress, but it was over now, and on the other side of the night.

  He looked again at Marianne and realised that he had been lying in her arms. How that had come to pass he did not know: he was deeply moved, almost frightened, when he thought of it and yet it seemed quite natural. Very gently he touched the rough frieze of her coat sleeve. Although she did not move he knew that she was going to wake. Her face was losing its sculptured calm and for a few seconds he watched as the truant soul flowed back into her body. Then she opened her eyes and smiled at him.

  “You’ve got hay in your hair,” she said.

  “So have you.”

  They sat up and pulled bits out thoughtfully while he tried not to think of what might happen next, or how the sun was whirling up behind the downs, and how it would soon be breakfast, and then lunch, and tea, and dinner, and night again. He was a little cold and cramped, but so conscious of refreshment, slaked fatigue and nerves relaxed that he wanted to make the moment last. Suddenly he flung an arm round Marianne and drew her down into the hay again.

  “Let’s go on sleeping.”

  He had not nearly finished sleeping. He wanted to sleep all day and wake up at this hour to-morrow morning. But Marianne pulled herself away, saying that she had slept enough and was going to pick mushrooms. A great many of them had appeared in the night, small, firm and white, in the short grass of the next field. She took Hugo’s handkerchief and began to search for them, swearing mildly at an occasional puffball. The collector’s glare came into her eye. She ranged far over the field while Hugo limped after her.

  Below them, like a scene reflected in a sheet of grey glass, lay the motionless trees, the church tower, and the chimneys and roofs of Syranwood. Hugo turned his eyes away from it and scanned the turf for mushrooms. For beneath those chimneys there were rooms, and in those rooms They were all asleep in their several beds. Asleep, but not for ever. They would wake up and with them there was still a young man called Hugo Pott, created by them for their pleasure. This monster had not vanished in the night. He might at any time rise like a phœnix in the morning sun. By lunch time
he would be wide awake and very much the better for the nice sleep he had had. Power had come back to him and he could use it in any way he liked. It would be quite easy to make up for the ground he had lost in the last two days. If he wanted to go back there was nothing to stop him. The battle was not over. It was beginning.

  He called to Marianne, up the slope, with a subdued but urgent summons, pitched to the dreaming quiet of the air. And she called back to him in the same low key. Stooping occasionally to pick another mushroom they drew together by the haystacks again. He said:

  “Marianne, what are we going to do?”

  “We?”

  “What am I going to do? When I go back there it’ll all start over again. Do you realise that?”

  He looked at the little hollow in the hay where they had spent the night, and then he looked into her eyes. The light was quite strong now so that he could see himself there, dishevelled and alert. It was the first time that he had ever been reassured by the sight of his own face.

  “Marianne,” he said hurriedly, “will you marry me?”

  “Some time.”

  “Why not now?”

  “Because you’ve got to go away now.”

  “Then you come with me.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because going away is your affair, not mine. I’ve got nothing to do with it. All those things that you told me last night have nothing to do with me. You’d be in the same hole whether I was here or not. Getting out of it is your kettle of fish and you’ve got to boil it. Nobody else can.”

  “But you will marry me some time?”

  Marianne hesitated and then said seriously:

  “I hope so. But we won’t talk about that now, please. We’ll talk about you going away.”

  Hugo looked at his patent leather shoes, at the hay on his clothes and his crumpled dinner shirt. His collar and tie were gone.

  “I expect they’re on the top of Chawton Beacon,” said Marianne, seeing his hand go up to his neck. “They were gone when I first saw you, anyway.”

  “Extraordinary thing,” said Hugo thoughtfully. “But you see my point. I’m not dressed for going away.”

  “You want some clothes and some money. That’s all you want. Come down to the house now, before they wake up, and change. I’ll see that the rest of your things are packed and sent back to London. I’ll say that you had to leave by an early train.”

  “And then what do I do? The open road, the knapsack, the wayside fire and all those horrors?”

  “Not if you don’t like it. I should go away in a train.”

  “Which train?”

  “Well, there are plenty of trains at Ullmer Halt. You can walk that far, I should think.”

  “I see. I take a train. Where to?”

  “That’s as you please. But as I said before I should pick Torquay. It’s not nice enough for you to want to stay there long.”

  “And my tooth brush? Do I put it in my pocket or carry a small suitcase, or wrap it in a red handkerchief and hang it on the end of a stick?”

  “Oh, toothbrush my elbow! Can’t you buy one in Torquay?”

  In this unreal pearl of a morning he found it difficult to believe that she was talking nonsense. And whenever they were not speaking there was always that repose, that quietness in his mind which had so alarmed him the night before. Now it was heavenly. It gave an effect of soberness to her fantastic proposition. And it heightened the horrors of the alternative—a lifetime of meals at the Acorn.

  “But I must have something to eat,” he pointed out. “I’m hungry. I can’t do all this on an empty stomach.”

  “Come down now and I’ll find you something to eat.” In the valley fields there had been a heavy dew. Their feet made silvery tracks in it as they crossed the grass, and the rose bushes sprayed them from the high garden hedges. Everything looked strange and spellbound. The house with its blank eyes floated before them like some flat old engraving.

  Marianne had the key of the garden door. The hinges creaked and a fusty indoor air blew out at them. On tiptoe, with cautious looks they shut out the cool morning world and felt their way along a stone passage. It was in the oldest part of the house, amid flagged kitchens and corridors which still smelt of the eighteenth century, of new bread and beer. A clock ricked loudly and hastily in the baking house and there was a faint scurry of mice over the floor. Somewhere behind a shut door there was a seismic snoring.

  “Be frightfully quiet,” whispered Marianne. “Fletcher sleeps down here next the pantry.”

  “I can hear him doing it.”

  They got past Fletcher’s door and into a small larder where Marianne found bread and cheese.

  “Start and eat some now,” she told Hugo, “while I go and make coffee. Then I’ll show you the backstairs to your room.”

  Hugo hacked off a bit of bread and stood leaning against the larder shelves, biting off large mouthfuls. There were some stone jars beside him full of almonds and raisins, and when he had finished his bread and cheese he ate some of then. Everything tasted very nice. He nosed into a canister which said TEE and found some lumps of sugar. He ate them.

  Somewhere among the rooms and passages he could hear faint footsteps which might be Marianne brewing the coffee. The rhythmic power-house throb of Fletcher’s snore continued and he felt fairly safe, though he knew that people snore loudest just before they wake up. But he thought that she might have come a little more quietly down the passage. Her heels clicked against the stones right past Fletcher’s door. He could hear them stop from time to time as if she was pausing to look into all the rooms along the corridor. They approached. His door was pushed a little way open and an old wary face looked in. It was Lady Geraldine, all muffled up in white shawls, a silk handkerchief tied over her head.

  “Is that Mr. Usher?” she asked, peering uncertainly.

  “No. It’s Hugo Pott.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Eating sugar,” said Hugo truthfully.

  “Where is my granddaughter?”

  “Making coffee.”

  She nodded and shut the door behind her.

  “I saw you come across the garden,” she told him. “I was looking out of the window.”

  Hugo, realising that the house might not have been quite so fast asleep as it looked, made a noise of dismay.

  “Quite so,” agreed Lady Geraldine. “That is why I came down to talk to you.” She looked him over severely. “It seems to me that you are a most inconsiderate young man. If it had been poor Aggie, or Philomena, or even Laura, I shouldn’t quarrel with you. But can’t you understand that Marianne is quite different.”

  “Oh, absolutely. If she hadn’t been, I shouldn’t have been so inconsiderate. Please don’t think …”

  He stopped, embarrassed.

  ‘Well?” said his hostess sharply. “What am I not to think?”

  “It’s … it’s not necessary for me to point out, to you, what you must, or mustn’t think about Marianne. Crude of me even to begin.”

  “Oh, I know that. But what am I to think about you?”

  “Only that I worship her,” said Hugo.

  “I don’t want her to be worshipped,” said Geraldine, with some heat. “I only want her to be left alone.”

  “I quite understand that.”

  “Then what happened? What have you been doing all night?”

  “We went for a walk on the downs, and then we sat down in some hay, and then we fell asleep,” said Hugo lamely. “It was quite early. We didn’t mean to stay there all night. But I haven’t been sleeping properly for a long time, and I suppose I was overtired. I dropped off and Marianne was too kind to wake me. So I slept till the morning. We woke about an hour ago, I should think, and then we picked some mushrooms. Marianne has them. And then I asked her to marry me.”

  “You can’t. It’s quite impossible.”

  “And she said she would … some time …”

  “Absolutely imposs
ible. She’s a great deal too young. I won’t have it. You must go away at once.”

  “That’s what she says.”

  “What?”

  “That I must go away at once.”

  “Oh? She does, does she? And are you going?”

  “Yes, I’m going. But I don’t promise not to come back some time or other.”

  A tray jingled outside the door and Marianne appeared with the coffee cups. She had heard their voices in the passage, so she was not surprised to see her grandmother, and merely said:

  “Don’t talk so loud unless you want Fletcher to hear.”

  “Fletcher hears nothing that he shouldn’t,” said Lady Geraldine. “Mr. Usher tells me that he has to go away at once.”

  “Pott,” said Marianne.

  “Give me that cup, child, and fetch another for yourself.”

  When Marianne had gone again, Hugo remembered that he ought to return thanks for the Syranwood hospitality.

  “Thank you very much for asking me,” he began. “I’ve enjoyed myself tremendously.”

  “Hmph!” said Geraldine. “You looked very ill when you came, but you seem brisker now. I daresay a good sleep was what you wanted. But I’m sorry it wasn’t a more amusing week-end. It’s a pity Mr. Usher had to go away so soon. He talks so well, doesn’t he?”

  Hugo made a strange noise as he sipped his coffee.

  “Wasn’t it Mr. Usher who was so amusing at dinner on Saturday night?”

  “I don’t remember,” confessed Hugo.

  “Nor do I. But I remember thinking the party was going to be a success. And then somehow it wasn’t. I suppose you’re going back now to that place … that place …”

  She was about to say the Guthrie Institute when a doubt assailed her. So she finished:

  “That place where you came from? I think you’re so right.”

  Her mind toiled through the thickets of imperfectly remembered things. For the life of her she would never be able to remember Mr. Pott from Mr. Usher. One wrote novels and the other hunted butterflies, and she had asked them because she had been told to ask them, and when next Laura or poor Aggie came to stay with her she would be instructed to invite a couple more. But they were so right, these young men, to go back to the places they came from because, poor things, they were not always a success. They talked well at dinner on Saturday night, but it was hard work for them, and they often looked unhappy, and one of them had upset Laura so much ten years ago that she was not going to allow the other to upset Marianne. She would send the child to Rome immediately.