The Philosopher's Pupil

  ‘Do you think, Hattie - do you think that you could call me “John Robert”?’

  ‘I don’t know you, John Robert.’

  ‘That is my fault.’

  ‘Of course I’d like to know you better, that would be nice. But Pearl is essential, she’s part of me, I won’t give her up — ’

  ‘When you marry you will have to — ’

  ‘Of course I won’t have to, what are you talking about? And as for when I marry, you seemed very anxious to get rid of me when you tried to - to offer me to Tom McCaffrey - and he didn’t want me — ’

  ‘He didn’t want you?’

  ‘No, why should he, I don’t blame him, it was a mad idea.’

  ‘I meant well. One day perhaps you’ll understand. Do you forgive me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes, John Robert.’

  ‘Yes, John Robert. Now I’m going.’

  ‘No. Don’t go. I forbid you.’

  ‘I don’t think you can.’

  ‘Pearl isn’t what you think. She’s not been faithful. I see now she’s an unfit person — ’

  ‘What on earth do you mean? Pearl has been perfect. She’s done everything. She’s taken all the trouble off you — ’

  ‘She was well paid for it — ’

  ‘What a mean thing to say!’

  ‘She’s envious of you, she’s jealous, she said so, she said to me “she’s got everything and I’ve got nothing”.’

  ‘Did she really? She must know that everything I have she has.’

  ‘That’s not so, Hattie. You must be realistic, you must be properly grown-up — ’

  ‘Being grown-up seems to mean being cynical and ungrateful and stingy!’

  ‘You and she have different fates, you must see that.’

  ‘Do you mean we have different stations in society?’

  ‘You have taken her for granted as a part of your life in a way which is no more possible. This is the natural parting of the ways.’

  ‘Of course our relationship has to change, it has always been changing, it is changing, but when two people love each other — ’

  ‘You seem not to realize how much that horrible scandal — ’

  ‘I don’t care about the scandal — ’

  ‘Well, you ought to and I do. It has done you a lot of damage — ’

  ‘Damage to me, what a rotten little journalist says in a rotten little town?’

  ‘You’ll see later, you’ll suffer for it later — ’

  ‘You seem quite glad to think so!’

  ‘You seem not to realize how much that scandal was Pearl’s doing. She told the press about you and Tom McCaffrey, she let that other man in — ’

  ‘She didn’t tell, she didn’t let him.’

  ‘She must have done. She’s an irresponsible mischief-maker. You heard her admit that she was outside kissing some man when you thought she was looking for Tom.’

  ‘Well, why shouldn’t she kiss a man, she’s lived without men all these years for my sake and for your convenience — ’

  ‘So no doubt it’s time she broke out and dropped the mask — ’

  ‘There is no mask, she’s a very truthful person, she’s one of the best people I’ve ever met!’

  ‘I think you don’t know how coarse she is and the things she can say - you are a child and you have met very few people and you think too well of everyone - people who seem nice can be thoroughly wicked.’

  ‘What’s wicked is that article that you’re so obsessed with, you got all that stuff out of the article, it’s all just spiteful lies, you haven’t any proof. Well, have you?’

  ‘Strong probabilities amount to proof.’

  ‘Perhaps they do in philosophy, but I prefer to believe what I see clearly.’

  ‘That’s in philosophy too. But what you see clearly can be false. Dear Hattie, believe me, I want the best for you, I want you, for your own sake and for my sake, bravely and sensibly, to let this relationship go, to let it disappear naturally into the past. As time goes by we often have to shed relationships which no longer suit us, such shedding is a natural function. There is no need to make a drama of this. You are at a stage in your life where you have to face many changes and challenges, many new things. We have to think about your university career. I want to talk to you at length about that. I am inclined to think now that an American university may suit you better than an English one. I am going to arrange for us to return to California in a matter of days. I’ll buy a house for us near the ocean, you’ll like that, not like the little one at Malibu, a real big house. I’ll aim to keep you with me very much more from now on — ’

  ‘That is very kind of you, John Robert,’ said Hattie. She had put her hands palm down on the cross-stitch cloth and was leaning foward, gazing at him earnestly with her pale marble-blue eyes. ‘That is very kind of you, and I realize that all sorts of things will change and must change in my life in the next years. I have always done what you wanted. When you wanted to see me I came, when you were tired of me I went away, I never questioned the schools which you chose for me, the journeys which you ordained. I will continue to do what you want, probably. I just tell you now that I will not give up my friendship with Pearl, I cannot, it is part of me. You would surely not respect someone who abandoned her friend.’

  ‘You speak of abandoning. But she abandons you. You said how much she had given up to be your maid. Can’t you now imagine that she wants to be free of you? She’ll be relieved, glad to go! That’s what I understood her to say when we talked frankly last night when you were in the taxi.’

  Hattie, breathing deeply, continued to stare. Then, removing her hands from the table, she leaned back. She said impatiently, ‘This is a silly argument. Of course I must see her, I’ll go to her, she’ll be expecting me. If she feels as you say, which I don’t at all believe, I shall know and naturally I will accept it. Coming away suddenly like that yesterday was horrible, it shouldn’t have happened. You kept bullying us and accusing us of things. You didn’t understand. You don’t know Pearl. I won’t believe anything against her.’ Hattie then stood up.

  ‘Sit down, please, please, Hattie, sit down a minute, wait.’

  Hattie sat down again. She felt hungry. She had eaten nothing last night, being anxious only to get to bed and into the death of oblivion for which she had so much longed at school. She was surprised at herself, at the way she had just been speaking to John Robert, at the firm almost rude tone she had adopted. But she felt perfectly clear-headed about the whole matter, and desperately longing to get back to Pearl.

  John Robert then approached the revelation of his secret. He intended only to come near to it, not to tell it. He knew that even this was a mistake and probably morally wrong, but he could not, looking now at Hattie across the table, and after the peculiar exciting awful tension of their fight, resist moving that step closer to her. It was, answering to his wish, an occasion, an opportunity. Perhaps she’s somehow vaguely guessed already, he thought; besides what does it mean? It isn’t anything definite anyway. I’ll just say something now, I must. If she sees Pearl, God knows what horrible thing Pearl might say. That’s another reason for just, at least, telling her in an ordinary way how much I care for her. The fact that Pearl knew it is a reason for speaking out, it’s not even a secret any more. It’s necessary to do so, and now’s the time. Hattie had, once too often, casually expressed her taken-for-granted view that her grandfather did not care for her and regarded her simply as a burden. John Robert felt now he at last could and therefore must comment on that assumption.

  ‘Hattie - dear Hattie - I’ve acted for the best, I mean I’ve tried to act well, to do right, it hasn’t been easy.’ A curious almost whining tone of self-pity here invaded John Robert’s voice.

  Hattie at once realized that something had changed, that some emotional statement was about to come out. She said more gently. ‘I’m sure you have always meant well, I mean wished me well.’

  ‘Oh Hattie, if y
ou only knew — ’

  ‘Knew what?’

  ‘How I’ve yearned over you and wanted you. You think I don’t care about you, but that isn’t true, it’s the opposite of true.’

  Hattie stared at the huge face of the philosopher which seemed suddenly like a relief model of something else, a whole country perhaps. She stared at the flat head, the lined bumpy fleshy brow and the very short electric frizzy hair, the big birdlike nose framed by furrows in which grey stubble grew, the pouting prehensile mouth with its red wet lips and the froth of bubbly saliva at the corners, the fiercely shining rectangular light brown eyes which seemed to be trying so hard to send her a signal. The soft plump wrinkles of the brow, pitted with porous spots, so close to her across the table, gave her especially the sense of something so sad, so old. She felt frightened and full of pity. She said, just in order to say something soothing, ‘Oh don’t worry, don’t worry, please — ’

  ‘I’ve deprived myself of your company simply because I cared so much. I think now I was wrong. Was I wrong, is it too late? I thought you might just find me appalling, a monster. I found myself so. I was afraid, yes. And yet I should have had more courage, more faith and trust, I should have got to know you, kept you with me, tended you — ’

  ‘But you have been very kind,’ said Hattie. ‘You mustn’t reproach yourself, you are always so busy, you wouldn’t have time for a child, it isn’t as if you were my father.’

  ‘I deprived myself of you. I could have had time, I wanted time, what better could I have done with my time. If I had felt less, had felt differently, I might have - but I wanted to keep you as something precious and I didn’t dare to be too close to you.’

  ‘I’m sure I would have bored you very much!’ said Hattie in what was intended to be a light tone.

  ‘You haven’t understood, better so, better so — ’

  ‘Please tell me what you mean — ’

  ‘Even if it makes you shudder, even if it makes you run? I love you, Hattie, I’ve loved you for years. For God’s sake, don’t leave me now that I’ve found you, don’t go away — ’

  Even before John Robert spoke the first words confessing that he was ‘in love’, Hattie had begun to understand what he was telling her. His trembling voice, the pleading movements of his hands, the painful ring of his ardent words, the glare of his light eyes, conveyed to her the dreadful importance of what was happening between them; and she did shudder, and she did want to run, but she felt also a most intense pity and a weird excitement, together with a shocked dismay at the spectacle of the man she had feared and revered reduced to a sort of babbling beggar in her presence.

  ‘Well, that’s all right,’ said Hattie nervously. She put her hand on her breast, her fingers upon the collar of her brown dress, and pushed her chair an inch or two backwards.

  ‘It’s not all right!’ John Robert smote the flimsy table with his hand, making several knives leap to the floor. He stood up and stumbled to the other end of the room and stood with his back to her leaning his head against the wall.

  Hattie looked at him with horror. She said, in a timid breaking voice, ‘Please be more ordinary, please be calm, you frighten me. Nothing can be so awful. I’ve always respected and trusted you. Just be quiet, be as you used to be — ’

  ‘I can’t be as I used to be!’ The words came out in a kind of bubbling roar, and John Robert turned round, wiping his wet mouth with the back of his hand, and gazed at the girl with eyes blazing with anguish. ‘Yes, you respected me. You never loved me. Can you love me, is it possible? I need you, I crave for you. Oh God, what stupidity, what wickedness to talk to you like this — ’

  ‘I’m all right,’ said Hattie, ‘don’t worry for me. I just want so much that you shouldn’t be unhappy — ’ Appalled by the effect of his revelation upon John Robert himself, she could not measure the enormity of it or decide how best to calm him or to express the pity which she felt. She could hardly bear to look at him, at the cool dignified remote philosopher, the guardian of her childhood, suddenly transformed into this pathetic spitting moaning maniac. At the same time she felt his presence, his closeness to her in the room, as that of a large uncontrolled animal.

  John Robert stood now against the wall, stooping a little, his hands hanging, his big head and his lips thrust forward. He said, ‘She was right to say that I shouldn’t be with you here.’

  ‘Who was right?’

  ‘Pearl. She taunted me with this, she laughed about it.’

  ‘Oh - no — ’

  ‘They’ll all know, she’ll tell them, everyone will know.’

  ‘No, no, no — ’

  ‘Don’t leave me Hattie. Just for today stay with me, let us be quietly together. I’m sorry I’ve behaved in this beastly way. But I’m glad that I love you and that I’ve told you, really. I’m in awful pain but I’m happy. Don’t go to the Slipper House, don’t leave me alone, don’t drive me mad by going - just after - all this. Just give me today, please.’

  ‘Was that then,’ said Hattie, ‘why you wanted me to marry Tom McCaffrey?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll stay with you,’ she said.

  On Friday Tom did not know what to do with himself. It was impossible to return to London and resume his ordinary life. His visit to Diane now seemed like a dark nightmarish cavern out of which there opened an indistinguishably large number of exits into hell. He kept wondering whether, after he had gone, George had quietly strangled Diane. He imagined her little body, with the fringed skirt and the pathetic boots, lying upon the chaise tongue and George looking down on it and smiling that weird mad radiant smile. His shoulders hurt where George had gripped them. He felt as if he had been kicked downstairs. His imagination was utterly fouled up, haunted by filthy loathsome apparitions. The vision had returned of Hattie as a witch, as an evil enchantress, a temptress, a devilish enticing doll, the wanton spoiler of his innocence and freedom. He imagined her in a nurse’s uniform, smiling frightfully, armed with a syringe which she was about to plunge into his arm in order to destroy his sanity. (Perhaps he had dreamed that last night?) He shook himself, shook his head as if literally to hurl the hateful visions out, to make them come away like gobbets of wax out of the ear. He thought, I’ve got to see Hattie, I’ve got to see her, then all this will stop. At any rate something will change if I see her, something will become clear, I’ll ask her something, some question, I’m not sure what. And in this resolve he felt almost a kind of fury. But I’ll wait till dark, he said to himself. If I were to meet Rozanov or George in the street I should start to scream. He felt an urge, during the morning, to go out and buy a paper to see if Diane had been murdered, but he resisted the urge, and consigned his thoughts on this subject to the class of apparitions. He spent the day feeding on ectoplasm.

  As Tom, in extreme agitation, was walking through Victoria Park at twilight, with his own mackintosh and Greg’s umbrella, he thought about Alex and how he ought to call on her, only not now of course. It only now occurred to him that he ought to say something to her about last Saturday night. He also saw at once that this was not only impossible but unnecessary. Alex, at least, was capable of swallowing things without demanding explanations. He saw her like a huge fish gulping it all down. He paused outside Belmont, seeing a light in Ruby’s room. He had intended to walk round to the gate in Forum Way, but decided to go straight through into the garden from Tasker Road. He walked down the side of the house past the garage and looking up saw that the lights were on in the drawing-room and the curtains drawn.

  He walked out on to the muddy water-logged lawn and the Slipper House came into view and he paused. The idea of seeing Hattie now seemed colossally important, ambiguous, unpredictable, dangerous, as if something enormous were at stake. Was it, and if so what? He had been going to ask Hattie a question. What question? What could he say to her now which would not be some sort of awful impertinence, would not his presence, especially his unheralded presence, be an impertinence? And suppose John Rob
ert was there? He had not considered, after the reception of his last call, telephoning. He thought, maybe I’ll give it up and see Alex instead. But his fate drew him on with a siren song of menace, and he thought, better a smash than any more abject waiting.

  The Slipper House, surrounded by dripping trees (the rain was abating) looked melancholy and mysterious like a lonely secluded house in a Japanese story. The shutters were closed, but there appeared to be a light on in the sitting-room and one upstairs. Tom put down his umbrella. He could not find his handkerchief (his cold persisted), but blew his nose on the sleeve of his shirt. He felt sick with apprehension as he approached the door. Some light was coming from the hall through the stained-glass, but he could not find the bell. He tried the door. It was not locked. He opened it softly and stepped into the hall. He stood a moment in silence looking at some faded roses in a mauve vase, and taking in the self-possessed quietness of the house which for a moment struck him as being clearly empty. He slithered out of his mackintosh, laid down his umbrella on the floor, and before he went any farther automatically kicked off his shoes and put on a pair of slippers from the box in the hall. He went to the sitting-room door, which was ajar, and looked in. There was no one there. The gas fire was on. There was a book and a scarf on a chair, writing-paper and a pen on the table. Even these evidences struck Tom as signs of a place overtaken by sudden disaster and abandoned.

  He moved back into the hall. The continued silence began to be frightening. He shuffled his feet; then called out, ‘Hello’. Then again, ‘Hello! It’s Tom McCaffrey.’ Silence. He opened the front door and shut it noisily, then reopened it seeing the bell in the light from the hall, rang the bell and shut the door again and waited.

  There was a sound of movement, steps, and a door opening up above. Then after a short interval a figure appeared at the top of the stairs. It was a man, tucking the tail of his white shirt into the top of his black trousers. The man was Emma.