Dangerous Ages | Page 2

the wood, cool and dim still, but not quiet, for it rang with
music and rustled with life. Through the boughs of beeches and elms
and firs the young day flickered gold, so that the bluebell patches were
half lit, like blue water in the sun, half grey, like water at twilight.
Between two great waves of them a brown path ran steeply down to a
deep little stream. Neville and Esau, scrambling a little way upstream,
stopped at a broad swirling pool it made between rocks. Here Neville
removed coat, shoes and pyjamas and sat poised for a moment on the
jutting rock, a slight and naked body, long in the leg, finely and
supplely knit, with light, flexible muscles--a body built for swiftness,
grace and a certain wiry strength. She sat there while she twisted her
black plait round her head, then she slipped into the cold, clear,
swirling pool, which in one part was just over her depth, and called to
Esau to come in too, and Esau, as usual, didn't, but only barked.
One swim round is enough, if not too much, as everyone who knows
sunrise bathing will agree. Neville scrambled out, discovered that she
had forgotten the towel, dried herself on her coat, resumed her pyjamas,
and sat down to eat her second slice of bread and marmalade. When she

had finished it she climbed a beech tree, swarming neatly up the
smooth trunk in order to get into the sunshine, and sat on a broad
branch astride, whistling shrilly, trying to catch the tune now from one
bird, now from another.
These, of course, were the moments when being alive was enough.
Swimming, bread and marmalade, sitting high in a beech tree in the
golden eye of the morning sun--that was life. One flew then, like a gay
ship with the wind in its sails, over the cold black bottomless waters of
misgiving. Many such a June morning Neville remembered in the
past.... She wondered if Gerda and if Kay thus sailed over sorrow, too.
Rodney, she knew, did. But she knew Rodney better, in some ways,
than she knew Gerda and Kay.
To think suddenly of Rodney, of Gerda and of Kay, sleeping in the still
house beyond the singing wood and silver garden, was to founder
swiftly in the cold, dark seas, to be hurt again with the stabbing envy of
the night. Not jealousy, for she loved them all too well for that. But
envy of their chances, of their contacts with life. Having her own
contacts, she wanted all kinds of others too. Not only Rodney's, Gerda's
and Kay's, but those of all her family and friends. Conscious, as one is
on birthdays, of intense life hurrying swiftly to annihilation, she strove
desperately to dam it. It went too fast. She looked at the wet strands of
black hair now spread over her shoulders to dry in the sun, at her strong,
supple, active limbs, and thought of the days to come, when the black
hair should be grey and the supple limbs refuse to carry her up beech
trees, and when, if she bathed in the sunrise, she would get rheumatism.
In those days, what did one do to keep from sinking in the black seas of
regret? One sat by the fire, or in the sunlit garden, old and grey and full
of sleep--yes, one went to sleep, when one could. When one couldn't,
one read. But one's eyes got tired soon--Neville thought of her
grandmother--and one had to be read aloud to, by someone who
couldn't read aloud. That wouldn't be enough to stifle vain regrets; only
rejoicing actively in the body did that. So, before that time came, one
must have slain regret, crushed that serpent's head for good and all.
But did anyone ever succeed in doing this? Rodney, who had his full,

successful, useful, interesting life; Rodney, who had made his mark and
was making it; Rodney, the envy of many others, and particularly the
envy of Neville, with the jagged ends of her long since broken career
stabbing her; Rodney from time to time burned inwardly with
scorching ambitions, with jealousies of other men, with all the heats,
rancours and troubles of the race that is set before us. He had done, was
doing, something, but it wasn't enough. He had got, was getting,
far,--but it wasn't far enough. He couldn't achieve what he wanted;
there were obstacles everywhere. Fools hindered his work; men less
capable than he got jobs he should have had. Immersed in politics, he
would have liked more time for writing; he would have liked a hundred
other careers besides his own, and could have but the one. (Gerda and
Kay, still poised on the threshold of life, still believed