A purple, a white, a purple again, a pink. Who ever heard of a pink lilac? Must be a façon de parler. By god, what a sight they would be when they all blossomed! The House of a Hundred Lilacs, they could call it, with engraved purple notepaper. Then, at any rate, Enid would like it—that, at any rate, she would like! Or would there be no “then”? Of course — how ridiculous. She hadn’t meant it as seriously as all that, it was because she was tired, a good night’s sleep would put everything to rights again, everything would be all right in the morning. A whole morning’s washing. The cesspool flooded. Old George butting in and messing up the Jim Connor business, as if it wasn’t already bad enough. Poor Ee, no wonder her nerves had been on edge. But in the morning, with the sunlight bursting in through the kitchen window, shining into the kitchen sink, silvering the tall upright cylinder of the boiler, and Buzzer singing upstairs, and himself rumbling the carpet sweeper over the dining room rug, and the kettle squealing on the stove — yes, it would probably be all right; this blasted moonlight, with its uncanny unreality, would be gone; and all these obscure pressures and shadows with it. She was probably already asleep, and lying, as she always did, with one hand reversed above her head, her elbow on the pillow, the neat small face, closed and serene, turned a little to one side. But suppose she was awake! And suppose she was still awake, when he himself went up to bed, lying awake there, but with her door closed—? Ah, that stretched and conscious silence, the taut and agonized silence as of eyes staring in the darkness, the silence as of carefully withheld breathing! And would you mind trying not to disturb me? Damn.…
“Yield to me, lilacs,” he said aloud bitterly, “and ye shall bear!”
He straightened up, for his back was beginning to be tired, heard an upper window rattling open in the Purington house, behind him, and then voices.
“Gladys?”
It was Mrs. Purington’s voice, remote, sing-song, whining.
“Yes, mother.”
“Have you got enough bedclothes? It’s going to be cold.”
“Yes, mother, enough clothes to sink a ship!”
“That’s good.”
Cold: it was going to be cold. In fact, it was cold already. And it must be late. But they were nearly finished, thank goodness, he turned and saw that Terence had reached the bottom of the garden and come back, had begun putting in the few that were to stand along the terrace wall. A dozen more, or a dozen and a half, at most. He thrust his shovel into the dark pine-smelling woodshed, closed the door.
“I’m knocking off, Terence,” he said, standing at the top of the terrace wall. “I’m going to walk down the road a bit. Do you mind finishing it by yourself?”
“Won’t take me about another ten minutes, not that.”
“By gosh, if I stooped just once more, my backbone would snap right out of me! Like a spring. How do you do it.”
“Guess it’s all in being used to it! I was born with a shovel in my hands. But it’s work, at that.”
“It is. Thanks a lot, Terence. How do you think it looks.”
“Looks fine. Yes, sir, in about two years it’ll make a fine show. Not much blossom next spring—”
“No?”
“No, they’ll want about a year’s growth of wood first, and to make some roots too — but then, by gorry, they’ll give you blaze enough — it ought to be a pretty sight. Got ’em in just in time, too — I can feel the frost in my sciatics already!”
They looked together along the row of lilacs by the Purington fence, as orderly as if they had been there forever. A patch of white sand glowed dimly at the foot of each, like a little circle of phosphorescence, and the dangling labels, too, shone white in the moonlight. Terence shook his head.
“A hundred!” he said.
“Felt more like a thousand!.. Well, good night, Terence, and I’ll see you Monday.”
“Yes, I’ll be over Monday with a nice load of manure, and put ’em to bed good.… Good night!”
“Good night.”
He heard the shovel strokes resume behind him, heard them still as he turned to the left to pass the Purington house, and then, as he stepped into the moonlight-stenciled street, he was engulfed abruptly in an astonishing silence. The crickets, all but a few, were still, now — their slower zeek — zeek — zeek — zeek was merely the moonlight made audible, the thin threnody of the moonlight itself. Peace be with you—pax vobiscum! Lucky little devils, just to crawl into a hole in the ground, freeze quietly into sleep, and forget everything until another year, another summer! Another summer, another love. He walked quickly, the leaves rustling under his feet, retracing the steps that he had taken only a few hours before, when he had come back empty-handed — empty-hearted? — from the post office. Nora, silent, was a different, an unknown Nora, it wasn’t like her to be silent, it could mean only one thing. Perhaps she had finally decided to marry that architect chap from Clark College and settle down — perhaps he never would see her again. Would he mind? It had been good, it had been merry: a comic genius — the muse of comedy — had presided over the affair from the very outset: never, in all their clandestine meetings, had they had an unhappy moment — not even when she had been so sick that time under the ailanthus tree in the moonlit back yard. Another summer, another love! Had they been in love? Was he in love with her now? Not as he was in love with Ee — odd, too, how they had never once called each other by their Christian names, or even by any nicknames — nothing but “you,” “you.” On the telephone always—“Hello? Is that ‘you’?” “Yes, it’s ‘me’—is that ‘you’? And who is ‘you’?” ‘“ME!’”… And then her delicious giggle, muffled and averted as she turned her face away from the telephone, the so characteristic half-checked giggle, as if it were all so dreadfully naughty, the whole thing — so dreadfully and delightfully naughty, but so dreadfully nice too, and himself and herself the naughtiest of all naughty people in a naughty but enchanting world! Enchanting, yes — the word was like a pang.… But had he really been in love? For the oddest thing of all was the way in which the first few months of the affair, so gay and light-hearted, had actually given him back something precious and lost in his relationship with Enid. The something that had been lost, or overlaid, after the birth of Buzzer; as if some kind of bloom, or illusion, had vanished, or been obscured, on the sudden intrusion of that so different reality. Yes, childbirth — who could have foreseen the effect of childbirth? That butcher-shop and meaty reality — as Paul so brutally put it, and quite right too! — was something for which love’s young dream hadn’t at all been prepared. A loss of belief! And Nora — dear delightful humorous Nora! — had somehow magically restored it. How the devil did such things happen? And why the devil weren’t they admitted! Shams everywhere, shams in love, shams in hate, shams in marriage or divorce, shams deeply bedded even in the secret self. The eye loving before the heart or hand admits, the heart hating when the hand delights. It was all a mess.…
BAKER STREET: TOWN LANDING.
He turned under the silver-gray signpost, proceeded down the sloping sand road towards Jim Connor’s house, which stood high and dark at the river’s edge. One light in an upstairs window, one light downstairs — somebody must still be about. A figure detached itself from the shadows of the porch, came uncertainly down the wooden steps into the moonlight — it was Jim, wearing the perpetual cap, pulled down over his eyes, a cigar tip glowing under the sharp visor. The cap that was never off, even indoors.