The Garden Party and Other Stories

He had meant to be there before, but in the front garden he had come upon Linda walking up and down the grass, stopping to pick off a dead pink or give a top-heavy carnation something to lean against, or to take a deep breath of something, and then walking on again, with her little air of remoteness.  Over her white frock she wore a yellow, pink-fringed shawl from the Chinaman’s shop.

“Hallo, Jonathan!” called Linda.  And Jonathan whipped off his shabby panama, pressed it against his breast, dropped on one knee, and kissed Linda’s hand.

“Greeting, my Fair One!  Greeting, my Celestial Peach Blossom!” boomed the bass voice gently.  “Where are the other noble dames?”

“Beryl’s out playing bridge and mother’s giving the boy his bath…Have you come to borrow something?”

The Trouts were for ever running out of things and sending across to the Burnells’ at the last moment.

But Jonathan only answered, “A little love, a little kindness;” and he walked by his sister-in-law’s side.

Linda dropped into Beryl’s hammock under the manuka-tree, and Jonathan stretched himself on the grass beside her, pulled a long stalk and began chewing it.  They knew each other well.  The voices of children cried from the other gardens.  A fisherman’s light cart shook along the sandy road, and from far away they heard a dog barking; it was muffled as though the dog had its head in a sack.  If you listened you could just hear the soft swish of the sea at full tide sweeping the pebbles.  The sun was sinking.

“And so you go back to the office on Monday, do you, Jonathan?” asked Linda.

“On Monday the cage door opens and clangs to upon the victim for another eleven months and a week,” answered Jonathan.

Linda swung a little.  “It must be awful,” she said slowly.

“Would ye have me laugh, my fair sister?  Would ye have me weep?”

Linda was so accustomed to Jonathan’s way of talking that she paid no attention to it.

“I suppose,” she said vaguely, “one gets used to it.  One gets used to anything.”

“Does one?  Hum!” The “Hum” was so deep it seemed to boom from underneath the ground.  “I wonder how it’s done,” brooded Jonathan; “I’ve never managed it.”

Looking at him as he lay there, Linda thought again how attractive he was.  It was strange to think that he was only an ordinary clerk, that Stanley earned twice as much money as he.  What was the matter with Jonathan?  He had no ambition; she supposed that was it.  And yet one felt he was gifted, exceptional.  He was passionately fond of music; every spare penny he had went on books.  He was always full of new ideas, schemes, plans.  But nothing came of it all.  The new fire blazed in Jonathan; you almost heard it roaring softly as he explained, described and dilated on the new thing; but a moment later it had fallen in and there was nothing but ashes, and Jonathan went about with a look like hunger in his black eyes.  At these times he exaggerated his absurd manner of speaking, and he sang in church—­ he was the leader of the choir—­with such fearful dramatic intensity that the meanest hymn put on an unholy splendour.

“It seems to me just as imbecile, just as infernal, to have to go to the office on Monday,” said Jonathan, “as it always has done and always will do.  To spend all the best years of one’s life sitting on a stool from nine to five, scratching in somebody’s ledger!  It’s a queer use to make of one’s…one and only life, isn’t it?  Or do I fondly dream?” He rolled over on the grass and looked up at Linda.  “Tell me, what is the difference between my life and that of an ordinary prisoner.  The only difference I can see is that I put myself in jail and nobody’s ever going to let me out.  That’s a more intolerable situation than the other.  For if I’d been—­ pushed in, against my will—­kicking, even—­once the door was locked, or at any rate in five years or so, I might have accepted the fact and begun to take an interest in the flight of flies or counting the warder’s steps along the passage with particular attention to variations of tread and so on.  But as it is, I’m like an insect that’s flown into a room of its own accord.  I dash against the walls, dash against the windows, flop against the ceiling, do everything on God’s earth, in fact, except fly out again.  And all the while I’m thinking, like that moth, or that butterfly, or whatever it is, ‘The shortness of life!  The shortness of life!’ I’ve only one night or one day, and there’s this vast dangerous garden, waiting out there, undiscovered, unexplored.”

“But, if you feel like that, why—­” began Linda quickly.

“Ah!” cried Jonathan.  And that “ah!” was somehow almost exultant.  “There you have me.  Why?  Why indeed?  There’s the maddening, mysterious question.  Why don’t I fly out again?  There’s the window or the door or whatever it was I came in by.  It’s not hopelessly shut—­is it?  Why don’t I find it and be off?  Answer me that, little sister.”  But he gave her no time to answer.

“I’m exactly like that insect again.  For some reason”—­Jonathan paused between the words—­“it’s not allowed, it’s forbidden, it’s against the insect law, to stop banging and flopping and crawling up the pane even for an instant.  Why don’t I leave the office?  Why don’t I seriously consider, this moment, for instance, what it is that prevents me leaving?  It’s not as though I’m tremendously tied.  I’ve two boys to provide for, but, after all, they’re boys.  I could cut off to sea, or get a job up-country, or—­” Suddenly he smiled at Linda and said in a changed voice, as if he were confiding a secret, “Weak…weak.  No stamina.  No anchor.  No guiding principle, let us call it.”  But then the dark velvety voice rolled out:” 

“Would ye hear the story
 How it unfolds itself…”

and they were silent.

The sun had set.  In the western sky there were great masses of crushed-up rose-coloured clouds.  Broad beams of light shone through the clouds and beyond them as if they would cover the whole sky.  Overhead the blue faded; it turned a pale gold, and the bush outlined against it gleamed dark and brilliant like metal.  Sometimes when those beams of light show in the sky they are very awful.  They remind you that up there sits Jehovah, the jealous God, the Almighty, Whose eye is upon you, ever watchful, never weary.  You remember that at His coming the whole earth will shake into one ruined graveyard; the cold, bright angels will drive you this way and that, and there will be no time to explain what could be explained so simply…But to-night it seemed to Linda there was something infinitely joyful and loving in those silver beams.  And now no sound came from the sea.  It breathed softly as if it would draw that tender, joyful beauty into its own bosom.

“It’s all wrong, it’s all wrong,” came the shadowy voice of Jonathan.  “It’s not the scene, it’s not the setting for…three stools, three desks, three inkpots and a wire blind.”

Linda knew that he would never change, but she said, “Is it too late, even now?”

“I’m old—­I’m old,” intoned Jonathan.  He bent towards her, he passed his hand over his head.  “Look!” His black hair was speckled all over with silver, like the breast plumage of a black fowl.

Linda was surprised.  She had no idea that he was grey.  And yet, as he stood up beside her and sighed and stretched, she saw him, for the first time, not resolute, not gallant, not careless, but touched already with age.  He looked very tall on the darkening grass, and the thought crossed her mind, “He is like a weed.”

Jonathan stooped again and kissed her fingers.

“Heaven reward thy sweet patience, lady mine,” he murmured.  “I must go seek those heirs to my fame and fortune…”  He was gone.