Dangerous Ages Part 16

8

Next morning at the office Barry said he had heard from Nan. She had asked him to come too and bicycle in Cornwall, with her and Gerda and Kay.

"You will, won't you," said Gerda.

"Rather, of course."

A vaguely puzzled note sounded in his voice. But he would come.

Cornwall was illuminated to Gerda. The sharing process would begin there.

But for a week more she had him to herself, and that was better.

CHAPTER VIII

NAN

1

Nan at Marazion bathed, sailed, climbed, walked and finished her book.

She had a room at St. Michael's Cafe, at the edge of the little town, just above the beach. Across a s.p.a.ce of sea at high tide, and of wet sand and a paved causeway slimy with seaweed at the ebb, St. Michael's Mount loomed, dark against a sunset sky, pale and unearthly in the dawn, an embattled s.h.i.+p riding anch.o.r.ed on full waters, or stranded on drowned sands.

Nan stayed at the empty little town to be alone. But she was not alone all the time, for at Newlyn, five miles away, there was the artist colony, and some of these artists were her friends. (In point of fact, it is impossible to be alone in Cornwall; the place to go to for that would be Hackney, or some other district of outer London, where inner Londoners do not go for holidays.) Had she liked she could have had friends to play with all day, and talk and laughter and music all night, as in London.

She did not like. She went out by herself, worked by herself; and all the time, in company, or alone, talking or working, she knew herself withdrawn really into a secret cove of her own which was warm and golden as no actual coves in this chill summer were warm and golden; a cove on whose good brown sand she lay and made castles and played, while at her feet the great happy sea danced and beat, the great tumbling sea on which she would soon put out her boat.

She would count the days before Barry would be with her.

"Three weeks now. Twenty days; nineteen, eighteen..." desiring neither to hurry nor to r.e.t.a.r.d them, but watching them slip behind her in a deep content. When he came, he and Gerda and Kay, they would spend one night and one day in this fis.h.i.+ng-town, lounging about its beach, and in Newlyn, with its steep crooked streets between old grey walls hung with shrubs, and beyond Newlyn, in the tiny fis.h.i.+ng hamlets that hung above the little coves from Penzance to Land's End. They were going to bicycle all along the south coast. But before that they would have had it out, she and Barry; probably here, in the little pale climbing fis.h.i.+ng-town.

No matter where, and no matter how; Nan cared nothing for scenic arrangements. All she had to do was to convey to Barry that she would say yes now to the question she had put off and off, let him ask it, give her answer, and the thing would be done.

2

Meanwhile she wrote the last chapters of her book, sitting on the beach among drying nets and boats, in some fis.h.i.+ng cove up the coast. The Newlyn sh.o.r.e she did not like, because the artist-spoilt children crowded round her, interrupting.

"Lady, lady! Will you paint us?"

"No. I don't paint."

"Then what _are_ you doing?"

"Writing. Go away."

"May we come with you to where you're staying?"

"No. Go away."

"Last year a lady took us to her studio and gave us pennies. And when she'd gone back to London she sent us each a doll."

Silence.

"Lady, if we come with you to your studio, will you give us pennies?"

"No. Why should I?"

"You might because you wanted to paint us. You might because you liked us."

"I don't do either. Go away now."

They withdrew a little and turned somersaults, supposing her to be watching. The artistic colony had a lot to answer for, Nan thought; they were making parasites and prost.i.tutes of the infant populace. Children could at their worst be detestable in their vanity, their posing, their affectation, their unashamed greed.

"Barry's and mine," she thought (I suppose we'll have some), "shall at least not pose. They may break all the commandments, but if they turn somersaults to be looked at I shall drop them into a public creche and abandon them."

The prettiest little girl looked sidelong at the unkind lady, and believed her half-smile to denote admiration. Pretty little girls often make this error.

Stephen Lumley came along the beach. It was lunch time, and after lunch they were going out sailing. Stephen Lumley was the most important artist just now in Newlyn. He had been in love with Nan for some months, and did not get on with his wife. Nan liked him; he painted brilliantly, and was an attractive, clever, sardonic person. Sailing with him was fun. They understood each other; they had rather the same cynical twist to them.

They understood each other really better than Nan and Barry did. Neither of them needed to make any effort to comprehend each other's point of view. And each left the other where he was. Whereas Barry filled Nan, beneath her cynicism, beneath her levity, with something quite new--a queer desire, to put it simply, for goodness, for straight living and generous thinking, even, within reason, for usefulness. More and more he flooded her inmost being, drowning the old landmarks, like the sea at high tide. Nan was not a Christian, did not believe in G.o.d, but she came near at this time to believing in Christianity as possibly a fine and adventurous thing to live.

3

Echoes of the great little world so far off came to the Cornish coasts, through the Western Mercury and the stray, belated London papers. Rumours of a projected coal strike, of fighting in Mesopotamia, of political prisoners on hunger strike, of ma.s.sacres in Ireland, and typists murdered at watering-places; echoes of Fleet Street quarrels, of Bolshevik gold ("Not a bond! Not a franc! Not a rouble!") and, from the religious world, of fallen man and New Faiths for Old. And on Sundays one bought a paper which had for its special star comic turn the reminiscences of the expansive wife of one of our more patient politicians. The world went on just the same, quarrelling, chattering, lying; sentimental, busy and richly absurd; its denizens tilting against each other's politics, murdering each other, trying and always failing to swim across the channel, and always talking, talking, talking. Marazion and Newlyn, and every other place were the world in little, doing all the same things in their own miniature way. Each human soul was the world in little, with all the same conflicts, hopes, emotions, excitements and intrigues. But Nan, swimming, sailing, eating, writing, walking and lounging, browning in salt winds and waters, was happy and remote, like a savage on an island who meditates exclusively on his own affairs.

4

Nan met them at Penzance station. The happy three; they would be good to make holiday with. Already they had holiday faces, though not yet browned like Nan's.

Barry's hand gripped Nan's. He was here then, and it had come. Her head swam; she felt light, like thistledown on the wind.

They came up from the station into quiet, gay, warm Penzance, and had tea at a shop. They were going to stay at Marazion that night and the next, and spend the day bicycling to Land's End and back. They were all four full of vigour, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with life and energy that needed to be spent.

But Gerda looked pale.

"She's been overworking in a stuffy office," Barry said. "And not, except when she dined with me, getting proper meals. What do you think she weighs, Nan?"

"About as much as that infant there," Nan said, indicating a stout person of five at the next table.

"Just about, I daresay. She's only six stone. What are we to do about it?"

His eyes caressed Gerda, as they might have caressed a child. He would be a delightful uncle by marriage, Nan thought.

They took the road to Marazion. The tide was going out. In front of them the Mount rose in a shallowing violet sea.

"My word!" said Barry, and Kay, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up his eyes, murmured, "Good old Mount." Gerda's lips parted in a deep breath; beauty always struck her dumb.