"You don't, eh? Well, you used to when you were small." His voice sounded rough again, almost as if he were angry, and he was staring hard straight away from her at the walls of the hospital.
"I used to like marshmallows too." Provoked because he would not look at her, she rose to her feet and flicked at his hand with the fringe of her small beaded bag. "It isn't polite not to look at the person you're talking to."
"You don't like it, eh?" he repeated in that queer brusque tone, while he slipped his arm about her and drew her to his side. For an instant he was so close that she felt his hardness and strength, as if he had turned to a figure of bone and muscle. Even his lips were hard and rough as they pressed into hers, and not only her resistance but her very flesh seemed to dissolve. After a single shuddering beat, her heart quivered into a stillness that was more terrifying than violence. "Everything has stopped," she thought desperately. "I can't see. I can't even see." Then, as she reached out and caught hold of the bench for support, she heard an inner voice saying triumphantly over the dark waves in her mind, "I never knew kissing was like this. I never knew anything was like this."
Drawing away, he said carelessly, in a voice that trembled slightly, "It's time we were going in. You're a nice little girl; but you must remember you're only a little girl. This isn't the first time I've kissed you."
Yes, it was true, he had kissed her before, but never like this. Oh, never, never, like this. If only she might stay here, within the safe shelter of the ivy, and sink down on the bench until the vehemence had subsided. She felt suddenly limp, boneless; her will had oozed out of her.
"We'd better go back. Your grandfather may be waiting," he added hurriedly, and she saw that he was impatient to return to the hospital. Perhaps it was only the fading light that made him appear different. Could he have forgotten so soon? How soon did men forget after they kissed you?
He seemed so eager now that she could barely keep up with him. As they started back, she saw his cigar still smoking on the ground where he had thrown it, and she thought, in a flight of irrelevance, "Oh, isn't everything wonderful! Isn't it lovely to be alive!" The glow in her senses still lingered, as if it were a part of the flushed evening air; but with every step away from the summer-house, this quivering harmony, without and within her mind, melted into the twilight.
"I'm sorry to hurry you," he said when they reached the porch. Where, she wondered, had this happened before? "But they expect me to go up as soon as your grandfather comes down. I'm afraid he's waiting."
"No, there he is now. William has found him," she replied in a tone she tried in vain to make as casual as his. Indignantly, she thought, "I hate him. Never, never could I really like a fair man, and one who is old too." Yet, while these words were still in her mind, she felt a throbbing soreness far beneath the surface of thought. Something stirred there, helpless as a bird just out of the shell, and she felt that this something—anger, jealousy, desire, disappointment—would outlast any effort of will, any fiercely uttered resolve. "After all, it wasn't my fault," she told herself passionately. "I didn't mean anything. I didn't mean anything in the world."
"Yes, there he is," George said quickly, and his voice, she realized, was suave with relief. "Have you just come down, General? We were watching for you."
Stroking William's head, General Archbald blinked in a dazed way, as if he had heard only half of the question. Never, his eyes said, as he held out his hand, had he known before what it felt to be old, to be finished, with life still unappeased in his heart.
"I stayed longer than I expected to," he replied wearily, "but I did not know. She seemed to like having me. I hope I haven't tired her."
"She had been looking forward to your visit. There were things she wished to talk over with you."
"Yes, I thought talking might do her good. John Welch came as I was leaving."
"I said I'd meet him. How are you going home? Is your car there?" Youth had dropped from George as quickly as it had revived in the summer-house. Lines of fatigue and that strange look of injured resentment hardened his features.
"No, Isabella said she would stop for me. She is probably waiting."
"Let me go out and look for her. If she isn't there, I'll drive you home before I go up to Eva. It won't take but a minute."
The General shook his head a trifle impatiently. It was kind of George to be solicitous; but solicitude in younger men was one of the favours he preferred to reserve for the last. "Don't worry, George," he said, knowing that the walk back was indeed too much for him. "Though William and I are not so spry as we once were, we are not yet decrepit."
"Of course you're not," George agreed; and for the first time since they had entered the hospital, he glanced at Jenny Blair with a smile. "Well, then, since there's nothing I can do for you, I'll go up to Eva. This is a nice little girl, General," he added, patting her shoulder. "It's hard to realize she's grown up, isn't it?" Without waiting for an answer, he turned away, while Jenny Blair stared through the front door at the row of empty cars by the pavement.
"I hope I didn't keep you too long, my child."
"No, I didn't mind. There was a lovely sunset."
"I know. Mrs. Birdsong's room faced that way. It is hard to watch her suffer. The hardest thing in life is to watch suffering and feel helpless."
"Is she suffering now, Grandfather?" Jenny Blair asked in a despondent tone. Mrs. Birdsong, who had been as vague as light in the summer-house, had suddenly become as vital as pain within the walls of the hospital.
"They have quieted her nerves, and she is so gallant—so gallant. . . . But I mustn't depress you, my dear. If your mother and I had our way, we would keep all knowledge of suffering out of your life. There is time enough to be sad. Time enough, Heaven knows, when one is old."
Jenny Blair sighed. "I am not sure, Grandfather, that I wish to go away. I mean to go away and study for the stage."
"Bless your heart, my darling, I knew you'd feel that way. I knew you didn't really wish to leave us." As he enfolded her with his protecting arm, which trembled a little, his voice quivered with the unavailing tenderness he felt for another woman.
CHAPTER 4
At the corner they found Isabella and the two older children in the big open car which Joseph Crocker was driving.
Handsome, robust, warm-hearted, Isabella was happily married to a man who combined the evangelical virtues with the untroubled face of a pagan. After a restless youth, she had settled into marriage as comfortably, Mrs. Archbald had once remarked, as a blancmange rabbit settles in a bowl of jelly. Though a trifle heavy in figure, she was nimble in mind and vivacious in conversation, a little too wide for the sheath skirt which was just going out, and not quite broad enough for the modern ideas which were just coming in.
"Sit by me, Father," she said, making way for him. "I won't let the children bother you, and there's plenty of room for William between us. Be quiet, Erminia, I can't hear what your grandfather is saying." Joseph, at the wheel, was silent, expert, and amiable. Fortunately (and this was one of the very nicest things about Joseph) his conversation was almost as limited as his religion.
While she nestled as far down as she could beside the children, Jenny Blair felt rather than heard the monotonous ripple of words punctuated with laughter. In the west, as she looked back, there was a shadowy green afterglow, like the thin branches of trees. The wind blew the scent of buds in her face; and it seemed to her that the twilight was whispering in her ears and playing slowly over her flesh. Gradually, while the car sped down the street, the soreness in her heart melted away, and she recovered the sensation of surprise and delight she had lost in the hospital. The farther she passed from experience, the more real her happiness was in her thoughts. "It is all my own," she said over and over, with the feeling that she was swept onward by some dark current of life. "I have something precious to think of that belongs only to me." It was strange; it was new; it was different from anything she had ever imagined; yet, in some secret way, she felt that she had always expected it, that all the years she had lived began and ended with that kiss in the summer-house. Not with her mind. She had never really known with her mind that a lover could kiss like that; but her heart had been prepared, though her mind had never suspected. "It is all my own, and it won't hurt anybody," she thought. "This is enough. I don't ask anything else. Nobody need ever know. Even he need never know that I think of him. If only I may see him for a single minute every day, I shall be perfectly happy." And it seemed to her, lying back in the car, with the April wind in her face and shivers of delight playing over her body, that a hopeless passion was far more romantic than the happy end of all the fiction she was permitted to read. With a wave of exultation, she remembered that she might stand at her window and look across two intervening roofs to the Birdsongs' house. She might stand at her window, with nobody suspecting why she was there, and watch him cross the pavement and open the front gate, or even, if she went to the back window and leaned very far out, she might catch a glimpse of him in the garden where Old Mortality used to live in the lily-pond. Suddenly, as if by a miracle, the world was glistening with joy.