Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI. A MOTOR to Alice Longworth There's a special quality about a December sunset, the ruffles of red gold gradually untightening, the congested Mauve islands on a transparent sea of green,
the ultimate luminous primrose dissolving into violet powder, and then the cold biting night lit up by strange patches of color that have somehow been forgotten in the sky. Eve was walking home, her quick defiant movements challenging the evening, her head bent slightly forward, her chin almost touching her muff,
while her eyes shone and her cheeks glowed, and her lithe figure seemed almost to be cutting through the icy air. This is happiness, she thought exultantly, this bitter winter stimulus, I feel so light, as if my heart and my mind were empty. Only my body is quivering with life, the pure life of physical fitness.
Why, why think, or feel, or look forward? She doubled her pace until her feet seemed to be skimming the road. I feel like a duck and a drake. She laughed to herself, nothing matters, nothing while there is still frost in the world. And then she saw a little motor waiting on the other side of the road.
She stopped dead and her heart stopped with her. There's no reason why it should be his, hundreds of people have motors like that. Resolutely she took a step forward. I can't see from here, and I won't go look, she added as she crossed over,
and then, shutting her eyes, Jerry, she said to herself, trying to kill his ghost with the name. The evening air had become damp and penetrating. It made her throat feel sore and she choked a little as she breathed it. Gingerly she approached the motor to make sure.
What an absurd phrase! Why, a leap of her heart would have announced its presence even had her eyes been shut. She knew its every detail. The sound the gears made changing, the feel of the seat, the way the hood went up, and above all, the little clock ticking its warning by day regular and relentless,
while at night its bright prying eyes reminded her of all the things she wanted to forget. It is my conscience, she would say, and fate and mortality. It symbolizes all the limitations of life. It is the frontier to happiness, the defeat of peace. Go on, he had said, and you will end by forgetting it.
It was what he had called her habit of talking things away. How often she had slipped into this motor after him, sliding along the shiny leather, nestling happily against him, explaining that there was no draft, that the rain was not coming in, that her feet were as warm as toast. How often he had steered slowly with one hand while her fingers crept into the palm of the other,
and then he had turned off the engine and they had sat there together silent and alone, cut off from the world. How she had loved his motor! Surreptitiously she would crescent with her hands stroking the cool shiny leather, and seeing him looking at her she would say, I think my purse must have fallen behind the seat. It had become to her a child and a mother, a refuge and an adventure,
an island cut off from all the wretched necessities of existence, associated only with her and with him. It was a much better kingdom than a room, for a room is full of paraphernalia in impedimenta, with books and photographs and the envelopes of letters to remind you of people and things that you want to forget. After all, she could not sweep her house clear of her life,
emptied of the necessary and the superfluous of her ties and her duties and her responsibilities. But his motor, his little gasping uncomfortable motor, that was really and truly hers, because it was his. Here was her throne and his altar. No wonder she sometimes stroked it a little when it was too dark for him to ask her what she was doing.
And now, now, someone else crept in after him, slid towards him on the shiny leather, murmured that her feet were as warm as toast and that there was no draught, and of course the rain didn't come in. Or did she say, Do you think there is something the matter with your motor today? It seems a little asthmatic.
Eve looked at the house. She could see brightness shining behind the curtains. She could imagine a glowing fire and a faint smell of warm roses. Who was the woman? What were they doing, sitting on either side of the fireplace, drowsily intimate,
smiling a little, perhaps, and hardly talking, conscious only of the cold outside and the warm room and one another? Eve shivered. Almost unconsciously she fingered the mudguard. A room is a horrible, unprivate thing, she said. People walk in and out of it.
Anyone. And there are books and photographs and letters. It is a marketplace, not a sanctuary. Whereas you, she looked at the little motor. It was too dark to see anything, but every line of it was branded in her heart.
No one will ever love you as I did, she said to it, and slowly, wearily, dragging one foot after another, she walked away into the cold, raw night. Nothing in the world like winter air to make you feel fit, Bob said to himself as he swung himself along the road at a tremendous pace. Joe, what a sunset he added, looking up at the red gold ruffles slowly untightening. He reflected that there is nothing in the world like health. Live cleanly, and the high thinking will look after itself, or at least won't matter.
Physical condition. There's nothing like it. Love and that sort of thing, all very well in its way, but a cold bath in the morning and plenty of exercise. He began to whistle. Then, because he did feel most frightfully well, to run.
Run a mile without being out of breath, he thought complacently. And then, because he hadn't meant to, wasn't even thinking of her, he grumbled to Providence, he found himself outside her door. And in the road there was a motor, a little coral-colored motor. He looked at it in dismay, and then he looked at the house. He saw it was lit up, and he imagined the room he knew so well.
The crimson, demands curtains and the creamy walls. The glowing fire and the red roses, the roses he had sent for her. Probably, she would be sitting on the white fur rug on the floor, her arms clasped around her knees. Her red hair as bright as the red hot coals. Her dark eyes dreamy and half closed.
Damn him, I wonder who he is. And he started examining the motor. It's not very new, he thought. The varnish is all off and those shiny leather seats are damn cold and slippery, drafty too, I should say. Hood doesn't close properly.
Must let it rain like a leaking boat. He put his hand on the mudguard. Bent, he said. He felt a little cheered. But then, looking at the glowing house, he grew disconsolate again.
Wonder what they're doing, he grumbled to himself. Jabbering away, I'll be bound. Never was much of a hand at talking myself. Wonder who the deuce he is. And then he looked contemptuously at the little motor.
Damned if I couldn't do better than that, he said. God, how cold it is. Irresolute he moved away. Then he began to run. But the raw air caught his throat and he felt out of breath.
Not as young as I was, he thought, as he walked away into the damp night. End of chapter 6
