The Hollow

‘Why don’t you come and see, Henrietta? It’s a long long time since you’ve been there.’

‘I know.’

Why, she thought, had she let so long a time go by? One got busy—interested—tangled up with people…

‘You know you’re always welcome there at any time.’

‘How sweet you are, Edward!’

Dear Edward, she thought, with his nice bones.

He said presently:

‘I’m glad you’re fond of Ainswick, Henrietta.’

She said dreamily, ‘Ainswick is the loveliest place in the world.’

A long-legged girl, with a mane of untidy brown hair…a happy girl with no idea at all of the things that life was going to do to her…a girl who loved trees…

To have been so happy and not to have known it! ‘If I could go back,’ she thought.

And aloud she said suddenly:

‘Is Ygdrasil still there?’

‘It was struck by lightning.’

‘Oh, no, not Ygdrasil!’

She was distressed. Ygdrasil—her own special name for the big oak tree. If the gods could strike down Ygdrasil, then nothing was safe! Better not go back.

‘Do you remember your special sign, the Ygdrasil sign?’

‘The funny tree like no tree that ever was I used to draw on bits of paper? I still do, Edward! On blotters, and on telephone books, and on bridge scores. I doodle it all the time. Give me a pencil.’

He handed her a pencil and notebook, and laughing, she drew the ridiculous tree.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s Ygdrasil.’

They had come almost to the top of the path. Henrietta sat on a fallen tree-trunk. Edward sat down beside her.

She looked down through the trees.

‘It’s a little like Ainswick here—a kind of pocket Ainswick. I’ve sometimes wondered—Edward, do you think that that is why Lucy and Henry came here?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘One never knows,’ said Henrietta slowly, ‘what goes on in Lucy’s head.’ Then she asked, ‘What have you been doing with yourself, Edward, since I saw you last?’

‘Nothing, Henrietta.’

‘That sounds very peaceful.’

‘I’ve never been very good at—doing things.’

She threw him a quick glance. There had been something in his tone. But he was smiling at her quietly.

And again she felt that rush of deep affection.

‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘you are wise.’

‘Wise?’

‘Not to do things.’

Edward said slowly, ‘That’s an odd thing for you to say, Henrietta. You, who’ve been so successful.’

‘Do you think of me as successful? How funny.’

‘But you are, my dear. You’re an artist. You must be proud of yourself; you can’t help being.’

‘I know,’ said Henrietta. ‘A lot of people say that to me. They don’t understand—they don’t understand the first thing about it. You don’t, Edward. Sculpture isn’t a thing you set out to do and succeed in. It’s a thing that gets at you, that nags at you—and haunts you—so that you’ve got, sooner or later, to make terms with it. And then, for a bit, you get some peace—until the whole thing starts over again.’

‘Do you want to be peaceful, Henrietta?’

‘Sometimes I think I want to be peaceful more than anything in the world, Edward!’

‘You could be peaceful at Ainswick. I think you could be happy there. Even—even if you had to put up with me. What about it, Henrietta? Won’t you come to Ainswick and make it your home? It’s always been there, you know, waiting for you.’

Henrietta turned her head slowly. She said in a low voice:

‘I wish I wasn’t so dreadfully fond of you, Edward. It makes it so very much harder to go on saying No.’

‘It is No, then?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You’ve said No before—but this time—well, I thought it might be different. You’ve been happy this afternoon, Henrietta. You can’t deny that.’

‘I’ve been very happy.’

‘Your face even—it’s younger than it was this morning.’

‘I know.’

‘We’ve been happy together, talking about Ainswick, thinking about Ainswick. Don’t you see what that means, Henrietta?’

‘It’s you who don’t see what it means, Edward! We’ve been living all this afternoon in the past.’