“It was like a bomb,” said Tilliard.
“It was meant to be.”
“I do feel a fool. What must she think?”
“Never mind, Tilliard. You’ve not been as big a fool as myself. At all events, you told her he must be horsewhipped.”
Tilliard hummed a little tune. He hated anything nasty, and there was nastiness in Ansell. “What did you tell her?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“What do you think of it?”
“I think: Damn those women.”
“Ah, yes. One hates one’s friends to get engaged. It makes one feel so old: I think that is one of the reasons. The brother just above me has lately married, and my sister was quite sick about it, though the thing was suitable in every way.”
“Damn these women, then,” said Ansell, bouncing round in the chair. “Damn these particular women.”
“They looked and spoke like ladies.”
“Exactly. Their diplomacy was ladylike. Their lies were ladylike. They’ve caught Elliot in a most ladylike way. I saw it all during the one moment we were natural. Generally we were clattering after the married one, whom—like a fool—I took for a fool. But for one moment we were natural, and during that moment Miss Pembroke told a lie, and made Rickie believe it was the truth.”
“What did she say?”
“She said ‘we see’ instead of ‘I see.’ ”
Tilliard burst into laughter. This jaundiced young philosopher, with his kinky view of life, was too much for him.
“She said ‘we see,’ ” repeated Ansell, “instead of ‘I see,’ and she made him believe that it was the truth. She caught him and makes him believe that he caught her. She came to see me and makes him think that it is his idea. That is what I mean when I say that she is a lady.”
“You are too subtle for me. My dull eyes could only see two happy people.”
“I never said they weren’t happy.”
“Then, my dear Ansell, why are you so cut up? It’s beastly when a friend marries,—and I grant he’s rather young,—but I should say it’s the best thing for him. A decent woman—and you have proved not one thing against her—a decent woman will keep him up to the mark and stop him getting slack. She’ll make him responsible and manly, for much as I like Rickie, I always think him a little effeminate. And, really,”—his voice grew sharper, for he was irritated by Ansell’s conceit,—“and, really, you talk as if you were mixed up in the affair. They pay a civil visit to your rooms, and you see nothing but dark plots and challenges to war.”
“War!” cried Ansell, crashing his fists together. “It’s war, then!”
“Oh, what a lot of tommy-rot,” said Tilliard. “Can’t a man and woman get engaged? My dear boy—excuse me talking like this—what on earth is it to do with us? We’re his friends, and I hope we always shall be, but we shan’t keep his friendship by fighting. We’re bound to fall into the background. Wife first, friends some way after. You may resent the order, but it is ordained by nature.”
“The point is, not what’s ordained by nature or any other fool, but what’s right.”
“You are hopelessly unpractical,” said Tilliard, turning away. “And let me remind you that you’ve already given away your case by acknowledging that they’re happy.”
“She is happy because she has conquered; he is happy because he has at last hung all the world’s beauty on to a single peg. He was always trying to do it. He used to call the peg humanity. Will either of these happinesses last? His can’t. Hers only for a time. I fight this woman not only because she fights me, but because I foresee the most appalling catastrophe. She wants Rickie, partly to replace another man whom she lost two years ago, partly to make something out of him. He is to write. In time she will get sick of this. He won’t get famous. She will only see how thin he is and how lame. She will long for a jollier husband, and I don’t blame her. And, having made him thoroughly miserable and degraded, she will bolt—if she can do it like a lady.”
Such were the opinions of Stewart Ansell.
9
Seven letters written in June:—
CAMBRIDGE.
DEAR RICKIE,—I would rather write, and you can guess what kind of letter this is when I say it is a fair copy: I have been making rough drafts all the morning. When I talk I get angry, and also at times try to be clever—two reasons why I fail to get attention paid to me. This is a letter of the prudent sort. If it makes you break off the engagement, its work is done. You are not a person who ought to marry at all. You are unfitted in body: that we once discussed. You are also unfitted in soul: you want and you need to like many people, and a man of that sort ought not to marry. “You never were attached to that great sect” who can like one person only, and if you try to enter it you will find destruction. I have read in books,—and I cannot afford to despise books, they are all that I have to go by—that men and women desire different things. Man wants to love mankind; woman wants to love one man. When she has him her work is over. She is the emissary of Nature, and Nature’s bidding has been fulfilled. But man does not care a damn for Nature—or at least only a very little damn. He cares for a hundred things besides, and the more civilized he is the more he will care for these other hundred things, and demand not only a wife and children, but also friends, and work, and spiritual freedom.
I believe you to be extraordinarily civilized.—Yours ever,
S.A.
SHELTHORPE, 9 SAWSTON PARK ROAD,
SAWSTON.
DEAR ANSELL,—But I’m in love—a detail you’ve forgotten. I can’t listen to English Essays. The wretched Agnes may be an “emissary of Nature,” but I only grinned when I read it. I may be extraordinarily civilized, but I don’t feel so; I’m in love, and I’ve found a woman to love me, and I mean to have the hundred other things as well. She wants me to have them—friends, and work, and spiritual freedom, and everything. You and your books miss this, because your books are too sedate. Read poetry—not only Shelley. Understand Beatrice, and Clara Middleton, and Brunhilde in the first scene of Götterdämmerung. Understand Goethe when he says “the eternal feminine leads us on,” and don’t write another English Essay.—Yours ever affectionately,
R.E.
CAMBRIDGE.
DEAR RICKIE,—What am I to say? “Understand Xanthippe, and Mrs. Bennet, and Elsa in the question scene of Lohengrin”? “Understand Euripides when he says the eternal feminine leads us a pretty dance”? I shall say nothing of the sort. The allusions in this English Essay shall not be literary. My personal objections to Miss Pembroke are as follows:—
(1) She is not serious.
(2) She is not truthful.
SHELTHORPE, 9 SAWSTON PARK ROAD,
SAWSTON.
MY DEAR STEWART,—You couldn’t know. I didn’t know for a moment. But this letter of yours is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me yet—more wonderful (I don’t exaggerate) than the moment when Agnes promised to marry me. I always knew you liked me, but I never knew how much until this letter. Up to now I think we have been too much like the strong heroes in books who feel so much and say so little, and feel all the more for saying so little. Now that’s over and we shall never be that kind of an ass again. We’ve hit—by accident—upon something permanent. You’ve written to me, “I hate the woman who will be your wife,” and I write back, “Hate her. Can’t I love you both?” She will never come between us, Stewart (She wouldn’t wish to, but that’s by the way), because our friendship has now passed beyond intervention. No third person could break it. We couldn’t ourselves, I fancy. We may quarrel and argue till one of us dies, but the thing is registered. I only wish, dear man, you could be happier. For me, it’s as if a light was suddenly held behind the world.
R.E.
SHELTHORPE, 9 SAWSTON PARK ROAD,
SAWSTON.
DEAR MRS. LEWIN,—The time goes flying, but I am getting to learn my wonderful boy. We speak a great deal about his work. He has just finished a curious thing calle
d “Nemi”—about a Roman ship that is actually sunk in some lake. I cannot think how he describes the things, when he has never seen them. If, as I hope, he goes to Italy next year, he should turn out something really good. Meanwhile we are hunting for a publisher. Herbert believes that a collection of short stories is hard to get published. It is, after all, better to write one long one.
But you must not think we only talk books. What we say on other topics cannot so easily be repeated! Oh, Mrs. Lewin, he is a dear, and dearer than ever now that we have him at Sawston. Herbert, in a quiet way, has been making inquiries about those Cambridge friends of his. Nothing against them, but they seem to be terribly eccentric. None of them are good at games, and they spend all their spare time thinking and discussing. They discuss what one knows and what one never will know and what one had much better not know. Herbert says it is because they have not got enough to do.—Ever your grateful and affectionate friend,
AGNES PEMBROKE.
SHELTHORPE, 9 SAWSTON PARK ROAD,
SAWSTON.
DEAR MR. SILT,—Thank you for the congratulations, which I have handed over to the delighted Rickie.1 I am sorry that the rumor reached you that I was not pleased. Anything pleases me that promises my sister’s happiness, and I have known your cousin nearly as long as you have. It will be a very long engagement, for he must make his way first. The dear boy is not nearly as wealthy as he supposed; having no tastes, and hardly any expenses, he used to talk as if he were a millionaire. He must at least double his income before he can dream of more intimate ties. This has been a bitter pill, but I am glad to say that they have accepted it bravely.
Hoping that you and Mrs. Silt will profit by your week at Margate.—I remain, yours very sincerely,
HERBERT PEMBROKE.
CADOVER, WILTS.
I hear that you are going to marry my nephew. I have no idea what he is like, and wonder whether you would bring him that I may find out. Isn’t September rather a nice month? You might have to go to Stone Henge, but with that exception would be left unmolested. I do hope you will manage the visit. We met once at Mrs. Lewin’s, and I have a very clear recollection of you.—Believe me, yours sincerely,
EMILY FAILING.
1 The congratulations were really addressed to Agnes—a social blunder which Mr. Pembroke deftly corrects.
10
The rail tilted a little from the south-west. For the most part it fell from a grey cloud silently, but now and then the tilt increased, and a kind of sigh passed over the country as the drops lashed the walls, trees, shepherds, and other motionless objects that stood in their slanting career. At times the cloud would descend and visibly embrace the earth, to which it had only sent messages; and the earth itself would bring forth clouds—clouds of a whiter breed—which formed in shallow valleys and followed the courses of the streams. It seemed the beginning of life. Again God said, “Shall we divide the waters from the land or not? Was not the firmament labour and glory sufficient?” At all events it was the beginning of life pastoral, behind which imagination cannot travel.
Yet complicated people were getting wet—not only the shepherds. For instance, the piano-tuner was sopping. So was the vicar’s wife. So were the lieutenant and the peevish damsels in his Battleston car. Gallantry, charity, and art pursued their various missions, perspiring and muddy, while out on the slopes beyond them stood the eternal man and the eternal dog, guarding eternal sheep until the world is vegetarian.
Inside an arbour—which faced east, and thus avoided the bad weather—there sat a complicated person who was dry. She looked at the drenched world with a pleased expression, and would smile when a cloud would lay down on the village, or when the rain sighed louder than usual against her solid shelter. Ink, paper-clips, and foolscap paper were on the table before her, and she could also reach an umbrella, a waterproof, a walking-stick, and an electric bell. Her age was between elderly and old, and her forehead was wrinkled with an expression of slight but perpetual pain. But the lines round her mouth indicated that she had laughed a great deal during her life, just as the clean tight skin round her eyes perhaps indicated that she had not often cried. She was dressed in brown silk. A brown silk shawl lay most becomingly over her beautiful hair.
After long thought she wrote on the paper in front of her, “The subject of this memoir first saw the light at Wolverhampton on May the 14th, 1842.” She laid down herer pen and said “Ugh!” A robin hopped in and she welcomed him. A sparrow followed and she stamped her foot. She watched some thick white water which was sliding like a snake down the gutter of the gravel path. It had just appeared. It must have escaped from a hollow in the chalk up behind. The earth could absorb no longer. The lady did not think of all this, for she hated questions of whence and wherefore, and the ways of the earth (“our dull stepmother”) bored her unspeakably. But the water, just the snake of water, was amusing, and she flung her golosh at it to dam it up. Then she wrote feverishly, “The subject of this memoir first saw the light in the middle of the night. It was twenty to eleven. His pa was a parson, but he was not his pa’s son, and never went to heaven.” There was the sound of a train, and presently white smoke appeared, rising laboriously through the heavy air. It distracted her, and for about a quarter of an hour she sat perfectly still, doing nothing. At last she pushed the spoilt paper aside, took a fresh piece, and was beginning to write, “On May the 14th, 1842,” when there was a crunch on the gravel, and a furious voice said, “I am sorry for Flea Thompson.”
“I daresay I am sorry for him too,” said the lady; her voice was languid and pleasant. “Who is he?”
“Flea’s a liar, and the next time we meet he’ll be a football.” Off slipped a sodden ulster. He hung it up angrily upon a peg: the arbour provided several.
“But who is he, and why has he that disastrous name?”
“Flea? Fleance. All the Thompsons are named out of Shakespeare. He grazes the Rings.”
“Ah, I see. A pet lamb.”
“Lamb! Shepherd!”
“One of my Shepherds?”
“The last time I go with his sheep. But not the last time he sees me. I am sorry for him. He dodged me today.”
“Do you mean to say”—she became animated—“that you have been out in the wet keeping the sheep of Flea Thompson?”
“I had to.” He blew on his fingers and took off his cap. Water trickled over his unshaven cheeks. His hair was so wet that it seemed worked upon his scalp in bronze.
“Get away, bad dog!” screamed the lady, for he had given himself a shake and spattered her dress with water. He was a powerful boy of twenty, admirably muscular, but rather too broad for his height. People called him “Podge” until they were dissuaded. Then they called him “Stephen” or “Mr. Wonham.” Then he said, “You can call me Podge if you like.”
“As for Flea—!” he began tempestuously. He sat down by her, and with much heavy breathing told the story,—“Flea has a girl at Wintersbridge, and I had to go with his sheep while he went to see her. Two hours. We agreed. Half an hour to go, an hour to kiss his girl, and half an hour back—and he had my bike. Four hours! Four hours and seven minutes I was on the Rings, with a fool of a dog, and sheep doing all they knew to get the turnips.”
“My farm is a mystery to me,” said the lady, stroking her fingers. “Some day you must really take me to see it. It must be like a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, with a chorus of agitated employers. How is it that I have escaped? Why have I never been summoned to milk the cows, or flay the pigs, or drive the young bullocks to the pasture?”
He looked at her with astonishingly blue eyes—the only dry things he had about him. He could not see into her: she would have puzzled an older and clever man. He may have seen round her.
“A thing of beauty you are not. But I sometimes think you are a joy for ever.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Oh, you understand right enough,” she exclaimed irritably, and then smiled, for he was conceited, and did not like being
told that he was not a thing of beauty. “Large and steady feet,” she continued, “have this disadvantage—you can knock down a man, but you will never knock down a woman.”
“I don’t know what you mean. I’m not likely—”
“Oh, never mind—never, never mind. I was being funny. I repent. Tell me about the sheep. Why did you go with them?”
“I did tell you. I had to.”
“But why?”
“He had to see his girl.”
“But why?”
His eyes shot past her again. It was so obvious that the man had to see his girl. For two hours though—not for four hours seven minutes.
“Did you have any lunch?”
“I don’t hold with regular meals.”
“Did you have a book?”
“I don’t hold with books in the open. None of the older men read.”
“Did you commune with yourself, or don’t you hold with that?”
“Oh Lord, don’t ask me!”
“You distress me. You rob the Pastoral of its lingering romance. Is there no poetry and no thought in England? Is there no one, in all these downs, who warbles with eager thought the Doric lay?”
“Chaps sing to themselves at times, if you mean that.”
“I dream of Arcady. I open my eyes. Wiltshire. Of Amaryllis: Flea Thompson’s girl. Of the pensive shepherd, twitching his mantle blue: you in an ulster. Aren’t you sorry for me?”
“May I put in a pipe?”
“By all means put a pipe in. In return, tell me of what you were thinking for the four hours and the seven minutes.”
He laughed shyly. “You do ask a man such questions.”
“Did you simply waste the time?”
“I suppose so.”