The Only Poet (39 page)

Gerda went and knelt by her bed. In his face she had seen quite clearly that he thought Ursula was going to die, that he was being faced with some technical problem which he did not think he could master. The hour she had anticipated was striking now. The hair stood up on her scalp, her skin was goose-fleshed. She whimpered, ‘Ursula, my baby Ursula!' and rolled her head about. She heard the steps of the second doctor coming up the stairs. He moved heavily; it did not sound as if he would be much help in an emergency. In her misery she groaned aloud, and stretched herself on the rack of intense prayer. It mysteriously seemed to her during the hours that followed as if the battle between life and death that was being waged in Ursula's body was being waged within herself also. It was true that she was praying, that her soul was going up in a steady flow to God, but she felt other forces raging within her. Sometimes she felt as if she were slipping off a ledge into a black abyss where there would be eternal agony. Sometimes she knew an inrush of pleasure that made her sway from side to side till she remembered with a start that no good news had come as yet. Then it was as if these two feelings were trying to enter into her at once; she wanted to laugh and cry at the same time and felt as if she were tickled to the degree of the most exquisite torture. There was also the feeling she had always anticipated that this was the supreme hour of her life, that everything which passed was of the highest importance. Then her mind seemed to split, like a canvas
too
tightly stretched. It no longer held up
to
her a picture of what was happening. She still was conscious of the physical signs of her alternating states, the sweat and driving heartbeats of her pain, the easier breathing of its relief, but it was no longer apparent to her what mental events were causing them and she had to search for these, naming them slowly and repeatedly, to make herself understand. Then everything went save expectation of the moment when they would knock on the door and tell her. Hour after hour passed and her brain was blank of everything but that. Presently she completely forgot what it would mean; but she still lay stark with attention.

At last the windows let in white daylight; and then it came. Gerda was on her feet in an instant, and her fingers found the handle of the door. She had to steady herself for a minute before she opened it, because a red mist covered her eyes and something seemed to cleave her body down to the heart. She did not know which of the doctors it was that said, ‘The patient is doing very well now, and there is a fine little girl.' While she leant against the door-post and sobbed there ran through her mind a desire, which she knew to be childish and unkind, to hurry along the corridor and scold Ursula for having given everybody so much trouble, but that was immediately eclipsed by another feeling even more strange than anything that had happened during the night. It was not merely the relief that was bound to come when she heard that her dear little sister was out of danger. It was an unmistakable feeling of redemption from guilt. Happy tears gushed up in her as if their source had been sealed and was now opened. She felt as if at the last moment she had been saved from committing a terrible crime. Yet she had been in no danger whatsoever of committing any crime. She perceived that no explanation for her emotion could be found on the rational plane; and that it must therefore be sought in the sphere of mystical experience to which, as she had been increasingly conscious for some years, she seemed to have some special right of entry. In a flash she realized that what she had been doing the whole night long was to take upon her own soul the burden of Ursula's sin, for which no doubt God had meant to punish her by death; and God had rewarded her sacrifice by sheathing His sword and letting there be not death but life. She clasped her hands and, raising her eyes in thankfulness, looked up a shaft of light.

It was something of an anticlimax to go into Ursula's bedroom, and find her sleepily self-satisfied and aware of nothing but the merely material events of the night; and of course one could not tell her, she was not on that plane. But anticlimax was to be the note of Gerda's life for many years to come. If she had not known that it was God's way to test those whom He had honoured with special spiritual blessing by subsequent tedium, she would have despaired at the flatness and savourlessness of the days that followed that miraculous night. She returned alone, since Ursula would not leave Ayliss, and resumed her life at home. Again she tried to take her family in hand, and make them lead a life more like other people's. But she was frustrated there by the development of a new phase in Ellida's eccentricity. From being exceptionally shy and retiring, and reluctant to be in the society of men, she became frank and frenzied in her efforts to marry. She began to dress with desperate and inexpert frivolity, attaching untimely frills to the soberest garments, and to make up her face with a determination that hardly compensated for lack of practice. Formerly she had spoken with disgust of a certain schoolfellow of hers, who was understood to have been leading rather a fast life since her marriage, but now she sought her out. The woman was amused at the adoration of this odd fish and took her about with her. Ellida came back laughing knowingly and repeating silly libidinous jokes and stories. Gerda suffered agonies of shame till, as it happened, Ellida met a simple scholar who was too inexpert in social ways to realize that she was behaving oddly, and only realized that here was someone who was offering him freely the affection which he had always wanted and had been too shy to ask from the more reserved. They married; and at once Ellida abandoned her extravagant demeanour. It was as if it had been a brightly coloured flag that she had waved out of a window to tell the passer-by that she was a prisoner and wanted to escape. Thereafter she took no interest in her family. She had two children, but she did not welcome any of the help that Gerda tried to give her with them. She muddled away at their upbringing as if they were her toys and she were a poor child who had never had any of her own before.

She had gone. Ursula had gone. Gerda felt very lonely. She was now well over thirty, and it seemed certain that she would never marry. It was difficult to understand the reason for this. Of course her circumstances had worked against it. When she was young she had had many admirers, some of whom had seemed to have serious intentions regarding her; and that these had never matured into definite proposals she had put down to the handicap of her family. When the time came when it was natural for her to ask them to her home, she used to be overcome by the hopelessness of it all when she had to bring them in and introduce them to her mother and sisters, so odd, so different from other people's mothers and sisters. Her embarrassment used to make her unable to speak, she would sit with her head down, looking at the floor. It was never a success. Of course the men never wanted to come back. She could not blame them: though she could not help feeling that they should have seen her value and realized that it was worth their while to overlook the awfulness of her family. But oddly enough, things did not get any better now that she was free of all her family except old Mrs Heming, who had now exchanged most of her individual characteristics except the generalized ones of age. Gerda supposed it was because she was no longer young, and because most men would not want to marry a woman whose sister had behaved like Ursula. But she had to admit that two men had seemed mysteriously chilled. It was as if they had found in her character either not as much as they had expected or something definitely repellent. Yet what could she have done to be better than she was? She felt amazed and hurt, until it became plain to her that it had been laid on her as a special cross that nobody should appreciate her.

Even her mother seemed resolved not to give her due credit. Presently nothing would please Mrs Heming save that she should be reconciled to Ursula. Nothing could have been nearer Gerda's heart than that her little sister should be taken back again, but she could not help feeling that Mrs Heming's joy over it all was a little ungrateful to her, when she had always been such a good daughter to her. She felt, too, that Mrs Heming and Ursula combined together in an attitude towards her that was not quite loyal. One afternoon at tea she gave Ursula a slice of cake and said, ‘Now, mind you don't make crumbs on the carpet!' and both her mother and her sister burst out laughing. She asked them what they were laughing at, but they would not tell her, and went on looking at her as if they were sharing a secret. But altogether she was worried about Ursula. By this time she was desperately unhappy with Gordon Ayliss. He would not give her enough money to keep their joint home going, and she had to work hard to pay the bills; and at the same time he insisted on her being a devoted wife to him, and nursing him through his frequent attacks of hypochondria. She continually complained of over-work and lack of money. Of course Gerda would have been delighted if she had left Ayliss on moral grounds, but she was sure she was wrong on these particular issues. Ursula had always been neurotic, and work was good for her. After all, as she was always pointing out to Ursula, she was not doing so very much work; most of her contemporaries were turning out far more stories and novels. And it was no use her saying she had exceptional handicaps. Everybody knows that the best work is done under difficulties. As for money, Gerda felt sure Ursula was extravagant. So she did not encourage her at all in these complaints. Obviously what she needed was not sympathy, but bracing, for she was letting herself go to pieces, looking years older than she ought to have done, and dressing like a drudge. But it was no good, for she let herself go more and more, and finally sent the little girl away to boarding school when she was only five years old. This made Gerda really angry. Ursula's excuse was that she could not look after her as well as Ayliss and make money, with only one servant to help her. But surely she could have made an effort.

Gerda was not living so unhappily, when her mother died. She took a flat in town after that, but could not settle down. She missed her mother, and the life she had led after the two others had gone. It had been nice living in the suburb where everybody knew her, and used to stop her in the street to ask her how her mother was, and to say, ‘It must be a heavy responsibility now you're the only one at home.' She turned for consolation to Ursula, but could get none there. For one thing, the little girl, Miriam, for whom Gerda had always felt a mystical love, had a curious dislike for her aunt. When Gerda spoke to Ursula, Miriam used to dash over to her mother as if to protect her. For another, Ursula's career worried Gerda terribly. Although she had not yet succeeded in ridding herself of Ayliss she had got on with her work, and was becoming well known as a journalist and playwright. Nobody could have been happier at Ursula's success than Gerda was, but obviously it was all on a wrong footing. Gerda winced at her articles, they were so outspoken, and frequently she contradicted what quite important people said; and her photographs were all over the place. Why did they have to have so many more photographs of her than of other people? And many of them made her look much younger than she really was. And the plays worried Gerda still more. They always seemed to her to contain a character that might have been taken from somebody in real life. Sometimes Ursula would deny this with such exasperation that it showed she was guilty. Other times she would admit it and try to pass it off by saying that the portrait was quite flattering, and that she had asked the original permission, and that they quite liked it. But that was nonsense, nobody could like being put into a play, and lots of people could not like it to be published abroad that they were friends of anybody with a reputation like Ursula's. However, there was no way of making Ursula see reason. She got quite hysterical when Gerda taxed her with putting into a play a dressmaker Mrs Heming had employed in their childhood, and had said that the woman would almost certainly be dead. But she admitted she had taken no steps to find out, which would have been the scrupulous thing to do. She was so showy and rash in everything she did. She was always with people who were well known; she must be pushing herself forward all the time instead of making sensible friendships with people of her own kind. Gerda suffered agonies when, as often happened, she went to Ursula's house and found her talking familiarly with some quite celebrated visitor. They could not resent it, of course, as they were in Ursula's house, but of course they must be hating it. What made it all so much worse was that it was impossible to tell her anything. One night when Ursula was on the eve of sailing to America to superintend the production of one of her plays, Gerda made a point of visiting her in order to warn her not to give indiscreet interviews. Her sister took it so badly and ungratefully. At first she kept on demanding when she had ever given an indiscreet interview, which was surely not the point; and then, sitting on the top of a trunk, she burst into a storm of tired and angry weeping.

It got worse as Gerda drew into her forties. Ursula had induced Ayliss to leave her, and was doing more work than ever. Her name and photograph seemed to be everywhere. A comedy had a prodigious success in America and was brought over to England with a great deal of preliminary trumpeting. Gerda, as its production drew nearer, grew more and more apprehensive, for she felt that such a success probably meant that there was something unwise and conspicuous in it, and when she had asked Ursula if she might read it her sister had merely uttered a loud and meaningless groan. When the actual day came she was so disturbed that she could not eat, and wandered out into the streets during her lunch-hour. Presently she saw a church, and she went in to pray for help in bearing her cross. When she got inside she found that it was a Roman Catholic place of worship, but she did not mind that. She had always been attracted by the superbly consequential appearance of nuns as they floated by with their black draperies and the spread white sails of their linen headgear. But she felt that as a Protestant she had no right to join the main group of worshippers, so she tiptoed across the church to a side altar. Raising her eyes she saw that she was in the Lady Chapel, and that she was looking up at a statue of the Virgin Mary, which meant more to her than any religious emblem had ever done before. There was no obvious reason for this. It was a very commonplace statue, representing the Virgin as fair and blue-eyed, like herself, and it had an unusually unaesthetic feature in the rays of light proceeding from her head, which were painted the same colour as the metal of great guns. Yet Gerda felt a wave of longing to unite herself in the spirit with this figure, that had such power and was so perpetually and unquestionably in the right. At the same moment a priest walked briskly and confidently between her and the altar, and passed a door in the wall which the casual visitor would never have suspected to be there. His air of being about some business that was kept private from the mob but was sanctified by the very highest authority aroused the most passionate envy in Gerda. She would have given anything in the world to feel herself lifted up above the general ruck of people who did not know where they were going or why on to this plane of divine certitude. Then suddenly it occurred to her there was no reason why she should not know this elevation. Like a flash of light there broke on her the realization that it had not been mere chance which had led her to this chapel. God in His infinite loving kindness had guided her steps to this happiness, which had always been waiting for her but which she had hitherto blindly overlooked. She dissolved in joyful tears.