There you are, he said, in a voice that suggested now I can get back to my lunch.
There was nothing more to say. She let him show her out to the door, she ran down the steps, she went on up the street. She felt more sober too, as if she had rid herself of the waste ends of a lot of surplus and superficial emotions. There was that dress for Mrs Belper that she must do. And she tried not to think of Dr Halliday, who thought she was a fool, and it is always uncomfortable to put yourself in a light in which you shine only as a fool.
You’ll have to shoot that poor hen, said Hilda.
She was standing by the dining-room window when he got back. Hilda finding the substance of pity in a hen trailing across the yard, or Hilda herself was pity, he felt, like an allegorical figure he had seen in a French church, the sad Gothic emptiness of the hands, standing in Happy Valley, only it was Hilda, and she was inclined to wear jumpers, blue or grey, that she knitted herself, and she wore her hair in a kind of coil with strands falling, straggling at the side. He put up his hand to his head. That Browne girl pitying herself because she had cut her hand was unreal, or he, or Happy Valley, was unreal, removing itself into a world of allegory, of which the dominating motif was pain. Sitting on the ferry he had wanted to write a play, but he could not find a theme, not like a sculptor who carved Hilda on an altar-piece. You looked through the Browne girl and there was nothing, except a little veil of self-pity. It is half-past two. You stand in the dining-room and pity yourself, and that is different, but the same, appalling in someone else, inevitable in yourself, but the same.
You haven’t had your pudding, Hilda said.
I don’t want any pudding.
Oliver…
She was looking at him, wanting to say something that wasn’t easy to say, and she rubbed her hands together as if they were cold. Both of them wanting to say something and then it only came in words.
It’s about Rodney, she said. He’ll have to go to another school. He’s beginning to see that he’s different. Different from the others, I mean. They persecute him. We’ll have to send him to Sydney to a proper school.
Yes, I know.
His head ached.
We’ll have to make the effort, she said.
All right. I’ve got to think. It’ll mean expense. You must give me time, Hilda. I can’t manage it all at once.
Here he was defending himself. She looked anxious, anxious for Rodney, or anxious for herself. Hilda coughed in bed at night. She turned about in bed at night and said, I can’t sleep, Oliver. What time is it? I can’t sleep, she said. My mouth’s dry. Perhaps you’d get me a glass of water. Because I can’t sleep. And now he looked at her as she stood there speaking for Rodney, and again there was so much he wanted to say, remembering Dr Bridgeman and how she hid her handkerchief. But there seemed no words in which to express compassion for a human being with whom you were in close relationship. It became even more difficult then.
He went and touched her face with his hand, pushing back a strand of hair.
All right, he said. We’ll see. We’ll all have to get out of this.
He thought she recoiled.
I didn’t mean…I only meant Rodney ought to have a chance.
It hasn’t started again?
I’m all right, she said, lowering her eyes. Only sometimes I don’t feel very well. Only a little cough. It’ll be better when the summer comes.
He held her hand. There ought to be so much that two people could say. He was fond of her. There ought to be so much. But they were like strangers standing on the railway station waiting for the train to go. You were always waiting for something that you did not say, that perhaps after all you could not say. But you felt you ought.
Now look here, he said, sitting on the table edge and starting to be matter-of-fact. There’s a man up in Queensland Birkett knows. He wants to exchange his practice for something in the south. You’ll be better there. And we can leave Rodney in Sydney on the way.
She was very still. But he could feel her relief, the gratitude inside her, because they would go away, Hilda receiving one more chance to put out her hand towards certainty.
I didn’t mean, she mumbled. I only thought that Rodney…
I’ll write to Birkett to-night, he said. Ask him to get in touch with this friend of his.
It would be better in Queensland. It would be warm, said Hilda slowly, slowly beginning to clear away the things.
She was tranquil now. He seemed to have stopped the quivering of some little nerve that whipped her into a ceaseless running to and fro. But she looked tired clearing away the things.
You ought to lie down, said Hilda, because she was like that, she had to transfer her own sensations and emotions to those she came in contact with.
He kissed her on the back of the neck, very lightly conscious of the scent of her neck which he knew so well, the scent and shape, sitting on a seat in the Botanical Gardens, when he thought he knew everything. And now he knew nothing, or at least he did not know Hilda, nothing more than the scent and shape.
He opened his mouth to say — what? Something that he would not say. So he went away along the passage to the dispensary, where he would lie down. He was tired. And later on she would bring him tea. Out in the yard George played with a cartload of stones, and Happy Valley stretched away back in grey sweeps, the child playing in the foreground unconscious of what had been arranged. He would write to Birkett to-night. And Happy Valley stretched away, greyly sweeping, the curve of telephone poles. He was standing in the window at the head of that great unconscious plain, how very grey, putting a hand to his beard, he must shave, he must sleep, he must leave Happy Valley to-night, to-morrow, sleeping for an hour or two on the hair sofa in the dispensary, it would take a month or two at least to drag up the roots and deliver safely on a towel that red child and she said hurt. He had been rather short. The way she held her wrist. She said Miss Browne. He would go up there in the evening and see, because he had not meant to be rude.
8
Mrs Furlow tried the door. It was locked.
Sidney, dear! she called. Sid-ney!
Yes?
What are you doing, dear?
Nothing, Mother.
Mrs Furlow stood by the door, one hand raised in perplexity to her mouth.
Hadn’t you better go out and get some air?
I can’t go out in the wet.
It isn’t raining now. You ought to take some exercise.
Silence made Mrs Furlow frown. She bent her head to the door and frowned.
You ought to go for a ride, she said. I’ll tell Charlie to saddle your horse.
Then she went away. She was passably content. She had arranged that Sidney should go for a ride.
Mrs Furlow’s habitual expression was one of puzzlement, because frankly her daughter puzzled her, and her chief preoccupation was her daughter. She used to say, when I was a girl I didn’t do this or that, but it was a statement that did not help matters at all. I do my best, she said, which meant that she made arrangements. She made many arrangements. She had arranged that Sidney should marry a young man called Kemble, an Englishman, who was A.D.C. at Government House. The young man did not know. But Mrs Furlow did, and that was half the battle. Mr Furlow only grunted and left her alone to do her best. Mr Furlow was very equable, and his daughter loved him. Sidney is passionately fond of her father, Mrs Furlow said, this without any bitterness, or as if she had resolved to make the best of a galling situation by suggesting that Sidney’s passion was a flower fostered by her own hands. For Mrs Furlow’s consolation was her own capability, whether as a president of charities or as the disposer of other people’s affections.