Dangerous Ages | Page 7

literary achievements. Then she had married Rodney,
and that was the end of all studies and achievements for her, though not
the end of anything for Rodney, but the beginning.
Rodney came out of the house, his pipe in his mouth. He still had the
lounging walk, shoulders high and hands in pockets, of the
undergraduate; the walk also of Kay. He sat down among his family.
Kay and Gerda looked at him with approval; though they knew his
weakness, he was just the father they would have chosen, and of how
few parents can this be said. They were proud to take him about with
them to political meetings and so forth, and prouder still to sit under
him while he addressed audiences. Few men of his great age were (on
the whole) so right in the head and sound in the heart, and fewer still so
delightful to the eye. When people talked about the Wicked Old Men,
who, being still unfortunately unrestrained and unmurdered by the
Young, make this wicked world what it is, Kay and Gerda always
contended that there were a few exceptions.
Nan gave Rodney her small, fleeting smile. She had a critical
friendliness for him, but had never believed him really good enough for
Neville.
Gerda and Kay began to play a single, and Nan said, "I'm in a hole."
"Broke, darling?" Neville asked her, for that was usually it, though
sometimes it was human entanglements.
Nan nodded. "If I could have ten pounds.... I'd let you have it in a
fortnight."
"That's easy," said Rodney, in his kind, offhand way.
"Of course," Neville said. "You old spendthrift."
"Thank you, dears. Now I can get a birthday present for mother."
For Mrs. Hilary's birthday was next week, and to celebrate it her
children habitually assembled at The Gulls, St. Mary's Bay, where she

lived. Nan always gave her a more expensive present than she could
afford, in a spasm of remorse for the irritation her mother roused in her.
"Oh, poor mother," Neville exclaimed, suddenly remembering that Mrs.
Hilary would in a week be sixty-three, and that this must be worse by
twenty years than to be forty-three.
The hurrying stream of life was loud in her ears. How quickly it was
sweeping them all along--the young bodies of Gerda and of Kay
leaping on the tennis court, the clear, analysing minds of Nan and
Rodney and herself musing in the sun, the feverish heart of her mother,
loving, hating, feeding restlessly on itself by the seaside, the
age-calmed soul of her grandmother, who was eighty-four and drove
out in a donkey chair by the same sea.
The lazy talking of Rodney and Nan, the cryings and strikings of Gerda
and Kay, the noontide chirrupings of birds, the cluckings of distant
hens pretending that they had laid eggs, all merged into the rushing of
the inexorable river, along and along and along. Time, like an
ever-rolling stream, bearing all its sons away. Clatter, chatter, clatter,
does it matter, matter, matter? They fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the
opening day.... No, it probably didn't matter at all what one did, how
much one got into one's life, since there was to be, anyhow, so soon an
end.
The garden became strange and far and flat, like tapestry, or a dream....
The lunch gong boomed. Nan, who had fallen asleep with the
suddenness of a lower animal, her cheek pillowed on her hand, woke
and stretched. Gerda and Kay, not to be distracted from their purpose,
finished the set.
"Thank God," said Nan, "that I am not lunching with Rosalind."
CHAPTER II
MRS. HILARY'S BIRTHDAY

1
They all turned up at The Gulls, St. Mary's Bay, in time for lunch on
Mrs. Hilary's birthday. It was her special wish that all those of her
children who could should do this each year. Jim, whom she preferred,
couldn't come this time; he was a surgeon; it is an uncertain profession.
The others all came; Neville and Pamela and Gilbert and Nan and with
Gilbert his wife Rosalind, who had no right there because she was only
an in-law, but if Rosalind thought it would amuse her to do anything
you could not prevent her. She and Mrs. Hilary disliked one another a
good deal, though Rosalind would say to the others, "Your darling
mother! She's priceless, and I adore her!" She would say that when she
had caught Mrs. Hilary in a mistake. She would draw her on to say she
had read a book she hadn't read (it was a point of honour with Mrs.
Hilary never to admit ignorance of any book mentioned by others) and
then she would say, "I do love you, mother! It's not out yet; I've only
seen Gilbert's review