Free The Only Poet by Rebecca West Page B

Evelyn got in and he cracked his whip.
    The lane to Peartree Green, being a true South Hertfordshire lane, climbed a hill and ran straightly along the top of a ridge between two high grass banks sprigged with primroses and surmounted by a hedge breaking into green and here and there splashed with the foam of may-bloom. Every now and then at some sudden rise of the road one looked over the hedge at the purplish elm-tops of some other ridge. For the bland green fields sloped down to broad wet vales, and rose swellingly again to another height, topped with such a lane as this. And on the other side they sank again and rose again, and so on. So that to left and right ridges rose one above the other, each one dimmer and bluer than the last, till they melted into the haven of the horizon.
    Adela liked driving through this quiet country that always looked as if it was prepared for a garden-party with Evelyn. Evelyn fitted into it so swell, as was only natural: for she was an aristocrat, one of those who had ordered the countryside from the dawn of Society. For on her father’s side she was a Furnival, and the Lorikoffs, her mother’s people, were, in spite of their Russian name, of the blood of many noble families. And Evelyn was an aristocratic type. She was an undismayed twenty-nine, not beautiful, but good to look upon and eminently ‘right’. Her fairness was quite unradiant, but gave the impression that she was cool like the inside of a rose. There was no beauty about her thin figure itself, for the waist was thick and her hips were too flat, but she looked immensely strong and moved slowly with a deliberate grace. Her face disdained expression, but about her there was a suggestion of reserved force and self-control that often made Adela, with her obsession of shyness and her sudden grasps at emotion, feel a fool.
    After a long silence Evelyn asked: ‘How’s Aunt Amy?’ She was so determined not to put herself out for anybody that she did not open her mouth when she spoke, so that her voice drawled through her teeth.
    Adela winced. She was aware from the intonation that she should have asked at once how Aunt Olga was. She didn’t see why. She was quite certain that Aunt Olga was all right. No one could imagine the lady – who weighed twelve stone and ate everything she liked and rode to hounds – being anything else. Nevertheless she felt guilty. ‘Oh, very well – how’s Aunt Olga?’ she stammered, hating herself for showing so plainly that she had felt the rebuke.
    â€˜Has had a touch of bronchitis. Went out to the Stitchington meet when she hadn’t really got over a cold in her chest. Came home a wreck.’
    â€˜I am sorry.’ She forced concern into her voice.
    â€˜She’s all right again, however.’
    Then there fell another silence.
    â€˜Been doing well at school?’
    â€˜Fairly well. I won the Science Scholarship. But of course I can’t use it.’
    â€˜That’s a pity. It would have been such a nice start for you. I mean, one makes such nice friends. Was it Girton or Newnham?’
    In Adela’s most fatuous moments she had never thought of the University as a place where one went to make friends. She felt her flesh creep.
    â€˜No, nowhere like that. I could have gone with it either to Liverpool or Manchester (that’s Victoria University) or Leeds.’
    â€˜Oh. Then it doesn’t matter so much, does it? They’re quite new places, aren’t they?’
    â€˜They have the loveliest laboratories,’ said Adela passionately. A stray sentimentalist passing by would have said that her eyes were the eyes of a childless woman yearning for a babe. But really she was looking down the vista of a laboratory, looking lovingly at the light shining back from the glass jars and the scales, watching enviously the quiet figures of those who were privileged to work there.
    â€˜Yes, but it isn’t that sort of thing