Randall hesitated. 'No, he said again. He could feel himself swelling with strength. 'I'll come tomorrow. But not now. I want to be quite alone now and think about you. I don't want this lovely piece of your presence to be spoiled before I quite make it over into my soul.
'Think, yes, she murmured. 'But not about me. Think practical thoughts, will you, Randall darling, practical thoughts.
Subdued by her tenderness he said 'Yes, yes, yes. And with a sort of triumph born of his recent abstention he watched her go down the long corridor. The green door opened and shut again and all was silence. He waited a minute or two. What in the world were they saying to each other now?
Chapter Fourteen
'THE Reverend Swann! Miranda announced with a giggle, putting her head round the door. She: never tired of this simple jest. She could then be heard pounding away down the stairs.
Ann was dusting Randall's room. She paused now with the duster in her hand. She did not want to see Douglas. She desired to stay quiet and melancholy, to be: left alone. The melancholy itself was a sort of precious achievement. She came sometimes to Randall's room, though never without a pretext. She looked about her for a moment before going down. The sun shone brightly into the small bright room. Everything was neat. The little row of gold-rimmed Dresden cups stood in descending order on the mantelpiece. The bright blue bird-woven William Morris tiles glowed on either side of the grate. The two quartets of rose prints, with their dark red mounts, paraded upon the wall. The blue and white Welsh bedspread swept smoothly up the incline of the pillow. The only shabby things in the room were the two toy animals. Toby and Joey, who had their place on the bed, their limp threadbare paws intertwined. Toby was brown and Joey was white, and each had lost an eye and a good deal of fur in the course of the years. Ann felt an affinity with them, as if she too were an old dusty object off which from time to time pieces of vague woolly substance fell. She was glad they were still there. Randall had taken his big Redoute away with him when he left; she had noticed at once its absence from the white-painted bookshelves in the alcove. But where Toby and Joey were Randall would come back. She still had in keeping the innocent part of him. She paused again at the door. It was so oddly like a boy's room: the room of an aesthetic slightly feminine boy.
Ann had scarcely met Douglas Swann since the evening of Randall's departure, when the unfortunate priest had been made to retire with so little dignity, since Swann's mother had become very ill and he had had to depart almost at once to sit by her bedside. So that she had not yet had an opportunity to discuss her new situation, if it was a new situation, with her clerical friend. She was not sure if she was glad or sorry at the prospect of now receiving his consolation, perhaps his advice. Douglas Swann often seemed to her to take, perhaps for professional reasons, too rosily optimistic a view of Randall's character. The same could not be said of Clare, whose enthusiastic sympathy Ann had had in abundance, and whose picture of Randall tended rather to the lurid. Clare was not of course unaware of Douglas's chaste concern for Ann. As a counterpart to this, she maintained a somewhat morbid interest in Ann's husband, over whose excesses there was a certain licking of the lips. In some curious way, Ann had long felt, Randall played an important part in Clare's imagination; and when, after some Randallian outrage, Clare cried with particular vehemence 'I wouldn't stand it from my husband. I'd leave! Ann felt in her friend a positive yearning for violence: a yearning which could scarcely have been satisfied by the gentle and rational Swann.
Just lately, however, Ann suspected because of admonitory letters from Douglas, Clare's 'Don't you stand it, dear! had changed into 'He'll come back, dear, you'll see.’ This doubtless would be the tone of Swann's own admonitions now that he was returned to offer them in person; and Ann felt, as she descended the stairs, a sense of guilty discouragement. The particular quality of her long battle with Randall had seemed progressively to empty the certainties by which she lived, as if the real world were being quietly “taken away, grain by grain» and stored in some place of which she had no knowledge. This did not make her doubt the certainties. There would be for her no sudden switch of the light which would show a different scene. But there was a dreariness, a hollowness. She could not inhabit what she ought to be. She felt this, anticipating the things which Douglas would certainly say. Though as she approached the drawing-room she felt also a simple pleasure in the visit of a friend.
Douglas Swann turned from the window with an exclamation of welcome. As Ann greeted him she saw that Miranda had tiresomely taken up the whole centre of the room with what she called her 'Dolls' Durbar'. The whole gang of them was mustered, the 'little people', or the 'little princes', as Miranda sometimes called them, all sitting up in a wide-eyed semicircle. The effect was rich and rather startling, since the little people had exotic and barbarous tastes in clothes and jewellery.
'My dear Ann, said Douglas, skirting the dolls, 'my dear —’ He took her two hands and drew her with him towards one of the window-seats. He gave her an intense look of wordless sympathy.
Ann freed her hands and said briskly, 'Well, Douglas, it's nice to see you back, and sweet of you to come over so soon. Then she remembered guiltily the cause of his absence and rebuked her own self-centred condition. 'But how is your poor mother? I do hope she's a little better?
Douglas shook his head. 'I'm afraid not, he said. 'There is little possibility of improvement. Indeed it must be faced that there is now no possibility of improvement. The end of her journey is in sight. He sighed deeply.
'I am so sorry! said Ann. She pressed his hand and they both sat down.
«'Change and decay in all around we see», said Douglas. 'One must accept it. But it is terrible how one grieves over these partings. I'm afraid it shows a lack of faith.
A lack of faith, thought Ann. Had she got faith? Did she imagine that she would ever see Steve again? No. And yet she believed in God, she had to. 'Poor Douglas.
'I always found my parents such a support, he said, 'a support that never failed. I suppose I was lucky.
Ann looked out of the window. Miranda was capering across the lawn, swinging in her two hands like tambourines the white enamelled bowls in which each night she put out the milk for her hedgehogs. Did Miranda find her a 'support'? Her daughter had been exceptionally cold with her lately, and had stopped calling her 'mummy', attracting her attention when necessary by cries of 'Oh' and 'Ah'. Something had been wrong, indeed, with her relations with Miranda ever since Steve died. The same was true of her relations with Randall. It was as if everyone blamed her for Steve's death. Or as if, she sometimes a little resentfully thought, since the others wanted to blame someone and she did not, she made a vacuum into which their blame ran.
In the distance under the beech trees Ann made out a solitary figure.
It was Penny. He watched Miranda cross the lawn, and then faded back into the shifting green shadows. He seemed like a poor faun watching human affairs. To distract Douglas from his grief, and also to put off the moment of talking about Randall, she said, 'It was so kind of you to take such an interest in Penny before you went away. He's very fond of you, you know.
'He's a thoroughly decent boy, said Douglas. 'I expect you'll miss him?
'Yes, said Ann. It occurred to her that she would miss Penny dreadfully. She sighed, and then said, 'Do you know, I think he's a bit in love with Miranda. Isn't it Absurd? I believe he's positively suffering, poor child.