CHAPTER VII
Hugh's intention had been to stay several days, at the least, with theChesterfords, and he had brought down luggage that would last anyreasonable person a fortnight. Unluckily he had not foreseen the verynatural effect that the sight of Seymour would have on him, and as soonas lunch was over he took his hostess into a corner and presented thesituation with his usual simplicity.
"It is like this, Aunt Dodo," he said. "I didn't realize exactly what itmeant to me till I saw Seymour again. He drove me up from the station,and it got worse all the time. I thought perhaps since Nadine had chosenhim, I might see him differently. I think perhaps I do, but it is worse.It is quite hopeless: the best thing I can do is to go away again atonce."
Dodo had lit two cigarettes by mistake, and since, during their rideJack had (wantonly, so she thought) accused her of wastefulness, she wassmoking them both, holding one in each hand, in alternate whiffs. Butshe threw one of them away at this, and laid her hand on Hugh's knee.
"I know, my dear, and I am so dreadfully sorry," she said. "I was sureit would be so, and that's why I didn't want you to come here. I knew itwas no good. I can see you feel really unwell whenever you catch sightof Seymour or hear anything he says. And about Nadine? Did you have anice talk with her?"
Hugh considered.
"I don't think I should quite call it nice," he said. "I think I shouldcall it necessary. Anyhow, we have had it and--and I quite understandher now. As that is so, I shall go away again this afternoon. It was amistake to come at all."
"Yes, but probably it was a necessary mistake. In certain situationsmistakes are necessary: I mean whatever one does seems to be wrong. Ifyou had stopped away, you would have felt it wrong too."
"And will you answer two questions, Aunt Dodo?" he asked.
"Yes, I will certainly answer them. If they are very awkward ones I maynot answer them quite truthfully."
"Well, I'll try. Do you approve of Nadine's marriage? Has it yourblessing?"
"Yes, my dear: truthfully, it has. But it is right to tell you that Igive my blessings rather easily, and when it is clearly no useattempting to interfere in a matter, it is better to bless it than curseit. But if you ask me whether I would have chosen Seymour as Nadine'shusband, out of all the possible ones, why, I would not. I thought atone time that perhaps it was going to be Jack. But then Jack chose me,and, as we all know, a girl may not marry her stepfather, particularlyif her mother is alive and well. But I should not have chosen youeither, Hughie, if your question implies that. I used to think I would,but when Nadine explained to me the other day, I rather agreed with her.Of course she has explained to you."
Hugh looked at her with his honest, trustworthy, brown eyes.
"Several times," he said. "But if I agreed, I shouldn't be worrying. Nowanother question: Do you think she will be happy?"
"Yes, up to her present capacity. If I did not think she would be happy,I would not bless it. Dear Edith, for example, thinks it is a shockingand terrible marriage. For her I daresay it would be, but then it isn'tshe whom Seymour proposed to marry. They would be a most remarkablecouple, would they not? I think Edith would kill him, with the intentionof committing suicide after, and then determine that there had beenenough killing for one day. And the next day suicide would appear quiteout of the question. So she would write a funeral march."
Dodo held the admirable sensible view that if discussion on a particulartopic is hopeless, it is much better to abandon it, and talk ascheerfully as may be about something different. But this entertainingdiversion altogether failed to divert Hugh.
"You said she would be happy up to her present capacity?" he remindedher.
"Yes: that is simple, is it not? We develop our capacity for happiness;and misery, also, develops as well. Whether Nadine's capacity willdevelop much, I cannot tell. If it does, she may not be happy up to it.But who knows? We cannot spend our lives in arranging for contingenciesthat may never take place, and changes in ourselves that may neveroccur."
Dodo looked in silence for a moment at his grave reliable face, and felta sudden wonder at Nadine for having chosen as she had done. And yet herreason for rejecting this extremely satisfactory youth was sound enough,their intellectual levels were such miles apart. But Dodo, though shedid not express her further thought, had it very distinct in her mind."If she does develop emotionally like a woman," she said to herself,"there will not be a superfluity of happiness about. And she will lookat you and wonder how she could have refused you."
But necessarily she did not say this, and Hugh got up.
"Well, then, at the risk of appearing a worse prig than John Sturgis,"he said, "I may tell you that as long as Nadine is happy, the mainobject is accomplished. My own happiness consists so largely in the factof hers. Dear me, I wonder you are not sick at my sententiousness. I amquite too noble to live, but I don't really want to die. Would it makeNadine happier if I told Seymour I should be a brother to him?"
Dodo laughed.
"No, Hughie; it would make her afraid that your brain had gone, or thatyou were going to be ill. It would only make her anxious. Is the motoraround? I am sorry you are going, but I think you are quite right to doso. Always propose yourself, whenever you feel like it."
"I don't feel like it at present," said he. "But thanks awfully, AuntDodo."
Dodo felt extremely warmly towards this young man, who was behaving sovery well and simply.
"God bless you, dear Hugh," she said, "and give you your heart'sdesire."
"At present my heart's desire appears to be making other plans foritself," said Hugh.
* * * * *
Esther had said once in a more than usually enlightened moment, thatNadine's friends did her feeling for her, and she observed them, and putwhat they felt into vivacious and convincing language and applied it toherself. Certainly Hugh, when he drove away again this afternoon, waskeenly conscious of what Nadine had talked about to Edith: he felt lost,and the flag he had industriously waved so long for her seemed to beentirely disregarded. He hardly knew what he had hoped would have comeof this ill-conceived visit, which had just ended so abruptly, but avague sense of Nadine's engagement being too nightmare-like to be truehad prompted him to go in person and find out. Also, it had seemed tohim that when he was face to face with Nadine, asking her at point-blankrange, whether she was going to marry Seymour, it was impossible thatshe should say "Yes." Something different must assuredly happen: eithershe would say it was a mistake, or something inside him must snap. Butthere was no mistake about it, and nothing had snapped. The worldproposed to proceed just as usual. And he could not decline to proceedwith it; unless you died you were obliged to proceed, howeverintolerable the journey, however unthinkable the succession of daysthrough which you were compelled to pass. Life was like a journey in anexpress train with no communication-cord. You were locked in, and couldnot stop the train by any means. Some people, of course, threwthemselves out of the window, so to speak, and made violent ends tothemselves; but suicide is only possible to people of a certaintemperament, and Hugh was incapable of even contemplating such a step.He felt irretrievably lost, profoundly wretched, and yet quite apartfrom the fact that he was temperamentally incapable of even wishing tocommit suicide, the fact that Nadine was in the world (whatever Nadinewas going to do) made it impossible to think of quitting it. That wasthe manner and characteristic of his love: his own unhappiness meantless to him than the fact of her.
Until she had suggested it, the thought of traveling had not occurred tohim; now, as he waited for his train at the station, he felt that at allcosts he wanted to be on the move, to be employed in getting away from"the intolerable anywhere" that he might happen to be in. Wherever hewas, it seemed that any other place would be preferable, and this hesupposed was the essence of the distraction that travel is supposed togive. His own rooms in town he felt would be soaked with associations ofNadine, so too would be the houses where he would naturally spend thosecoming months of Augus
t and September. Not till October, when his dutiesas a clerk in the Foreign Office called him back to town, had heanything with which he felt he could occupy himself. An exceptionalcapacity for finding days too short and few, even though they had noduties to make the hours pass, had hitherto been his only brilliance;now all gift of the kind seemed to have been snatched from him: he couldnot conceive what to do with to-morrow or the next day or any of thedays that should follow. An allowance of seven days to the week seemedan inordinate superfluity; he was filled with irritation at the thoughtof the leisurely march of interminable time.
He spent the evening alone, feeling that he was a shade less intolerableto himself than anybody else would have been; also, he felt incapable ofthe attention which social intercourse demands. His mind seemed utterlyout of his control, as unable to remain in one place as his body. Evenif he thought of Nadine, it wandered, and he would notice that a picturehung crooked, and jump up to straighten it. One such was a charmingwater-color sketch by Esther of the beach at Meering, with a splash ofsunlight low in the West that, shining through a chimney in the clouds,struck the sea very far out, and made there a little island of reflectedgold. Esther had put in this golden islet with some reluctance: she hadsaid that even in Nature it looked unreal, and would look even moreunreal in Art, especially when the artist happened to be herself. ButNadine had voted with Hugh on behalf of the golden island, just becauseit would appear unreal and incredible. "It is only the unreal thingsthat are vivid to us," she had said, "and the incredible things are justthose which we believe in. Isn't that so, Hughie?"
How well he remembered her saying that; her voice rang in his ears likea haunting tune! And while Esther made this artistic sacrifice to thegod of things as they are not, he and Nadine strolled along the firmsandy beach, shining with the moisture of the receding tide. She hadtaken his arm, and just as her voice now sounded in his ears, so hecould feel the pressure of her hand on his coat.
"You live among unrealities," she said, "although you are so simple andpractical. You are thinking now that some day you and I will go to liveon that golden island. But there is no island really, it is just likethe rest of the sea, only the sun shines on it."
The bitter truth of that struck him now as applied to her and himself.Though she had refused him before, the sun shone on those days, and notuntil she had engaged herself to Seymour did the gold fade. Not untilto-day when he had definite confirmation of that from her own lips, hadhe really believed in her rejection of him. He well knew her affectionfor him; he believed, and rightly, that if she had been asked to nameher best friend, she would have named none other than himself. It hadbeen impossible for him not to be sanguine over the eventual outcome,and he had never really doubted that some day her affection would bekindled into flame. He had often told himself that it was through himthat she would discover her heart. As she had suggested, he would someday crack the nut for her, and show her her own kernel, and she wouldfind it was his.
And now all those optimisms were snuffed out. He had completely to alterand adjust his focus, but that could not be done at once. To-night hepeered out, as it were upon familiar scenes, and found that his sight ofthem was misty and blurred. The whole world had vanished in cold graymists. He was lost, quite lost, and ... and there was a letter for himon the table which he had not noticed. The envelope was obviously ofcheap quality, and was of those proportions which suggest a bill. A billit was from a bookseller, of four shillings and sixpence, incurred overa book Nadine had said she wanted to read. He had passed thebookseller's on his way home immediately afterwards and of course he hadordered it for her. She had not cared for it; she had found it unreal."The man is meant to arouse my sympathy," she had said, "and onlyarouses my intense indifference. I am acutely uninterested in whathappens to him." Hugh felt as if she had been speaking of himself, butthe moment after knew that he did her an injustice. Even now he couldnot doubt the sincerity of her affection for him. But there wassomething frozen about it. It was like sleet, and he, like a parchedland, longed for the pity of the soft rain.
Hugh had a wholesome contempt for people who pity themselves, and itstruck him at this point that he was in considerable danger of becomingdespicable in his own eyes. He had been capable of sufficient manlinessto remove himself from Nadine that afternoon, but his solitary eveningwas not up to that standard; he might as well have remained at Winston,if he was to endorse his refusal to dangle after her with nothing morevirile than those drawling sentimentalities. She was not for him: he hadmade this expedition to-day in order to convince himself on that point,and already his determination was showing itself unstable, if itsuffered him to dangle in mind though not in body. And yet how was itpossible not to? Nadine, physically and tangibly, was certainly going topass out of his life, but to eradicate her from his soul would be an actof spiritual suicide. Physically there was no doubt that he wouldcontinue to exist without her, spiritually he did not see how existencewas possible on the same terms. But he need not drivel about her. Therewere always two ways of behaving after receiving a blow which knockedyou down, and the one that commended itself most to Hugh was to get upagain.
* * * * *
Lady Ayr at the end of the London season had for years been accustomedto carry out some innocent plan for the improvement and discomfort ofher family. One year she dragged them along the castles by the Loire,another she forced them, as if by pumping, through the picture galleriesof Holland, and this summer she proposed to show them a quantity of theEnglish cathedrals. These abominable pilgrimages were made pompously andeconomically: they stayed at odious inns, where she haggled andbargained with the proprietors, but on the other hand she informed thepetrified vergers and custodians whom she conducted (rather than wasconducted by) round the cathedrals or castles in their charge, that shewas the Marchioness of Ayr, was directly descended from the occupants ofthe finest and most antique tombs, that the castle in question had oncebelonged to her family, or that the gem of the Holbeins represented someaunt of hers in bygone generations. Here pomp held sway, but economycame into its own again over the small silver coin with which sherewarded her conductor. On English lines she had a third class carriagereserved for her and beguiled the tedium of journeys by reading aloudout of guide-books an account of what they had seen or what they weregoing to visit. Generally they put up at "temperance" hotels, and shemade a point of afternoon tea being included in the exiguous terms atwhich she insisted on being entertained. John aided and abetted her inthose tours, exhibiting an ogreish appetite for all things Gothic andmental improvement; and her husband followed her with a white umbrellaand sat down as much as possible. Esther's part in them was that of aresigned and inattentive martyr, and she fired off picture postcards ofthe places they visited to Nadine and others with "This is a foul hole,"or "The beastliest inn we have struck yet" written on them, whileSeymour revenged himself on the discomforts inflicted on him, byexamining his mother as to where they had seen a particular rose-windowor portrait by Rembrandt, and then by the aid of a guide-book provingshe was wrong. Why none of them revolted and refused to go on theseannual journeys, now that they had arrived at adult years, they none ofthem exactly knew, any more than they knew why they went, when summoned,to their mother's dreadful dinner-parties, and it must be supposed thatthere was a touch of the inevitable about such diversions: you mightgrumble and complain, but you went.
This year the tour was to start with the interesting city of Lincoln andthe party assembled on the platform at King's Cross at an early hour.The plan was to lunch in the train, so as to start sight-seeingimmediately on arrival, and continue (with a short excursion to thehotel in order to have the tea which had been included in the terms)until the fading light made it impossible to distinguish ancestral tombsor Norman arches. Lady Ayr had not seen Seymour since his engagement,and, as she ate rather grisly beef sandwiches, she gave him her views onthe step. Though they were all together in one compartment theconversation might be considered a private one, for
Lord Ayr wassleeping gently in one corner, John was absorbed in the account of theRoman remains at Lincoln (Lindum Colonia, as he had already announced),and Esther with a slightly leaky stylograph was writing a description oftheir depressing journey to Nadine.
"What you are marrying on, Seymour, I don't know," she said. "Neitheryour father nor I will be able to increase your allowance, and NadineWaldenech has the appearance of being an expensive young woman. I hopeshe realizes she is marrying the son of a poor man, and that we go thirdclass."
"She is aware of all that," said Seymour, wiping his long whitefinger-tips on an exceedingly fine cambric handkerchief, afterswallowing a sandwich or two, "and we are marrying really on her money."
"I am not sure that I approve of that," said his mother.
"The remedy is obvious," remarked Seymour. "You can increase myallowance. I have no objection. Mother, would you kindly let me throwthe rest of that sandwich out of the window? It makes me ill to look atit."
"We are not talking about sandwiches. Why do you not earn some moneylike other younger sons?"
"I do. I earned four pounds last week, with describing your party andother things, and there is my embroidery as well, which I shall work atmore industriously. I shall do embroidery in the evening after dinnerwhile Nadine smokes."
Lady Ayr looked out of the window and pointed magisterially to thetowers of some great church in the town through which the train waspassing.
"Peterborough," she said. "We shall see Peterborough on our way back.Peterborough, John. Ayr and Esther, we are passing throughPeterborough."
Esther looked out upon the mean backs of houses.
"The sooner we pass through Peterborough the better," she observed.
John turned rapidly over the leaves of his guide-book.
"Peterborough is seventy-eight miles from London, and contains manybuildings of interest," he informed them.
Lady Ayr returned to Seymour.
"I hope you will insist on her leaving off smoking when you are marriedto her," she said. "I cannot say she is the wife I should have chosenfor you."
"I chose her myself," observed Seymour.
"Tell me more about her. Certainly the Waldenechs are a very old family,there is that to be said. Is she serious? Does she feel herresponsibilities? Or is she like her mother?"
Seymour brushed a few remaining sandwich-crumbs off his trousers.
"I think Aunt Dodo is one of the most serious people I know," he said."She is serious about everything. She does everything with all hermight. Nadine is not quite so serious as that. She is rather flippantabout things like food and dress. However, no doubt my influence willmake her more serious. But as a matter of fact I can't tell you aboutNadine. A fortnight ago, when I proposed to her, I could have. I couldhave given you a very complete account of her. But I can't any longer: Iam getting blind about her. I only know that it is she. Not so long agoI told her a quantity of her faults with ruthless accuracy, but Icouldn't now. I can't see them any more: there's a glamor."
Esther looked up.
"Oh, Seymour," she said, "are you talking about Nadine? Are you fallingin love with her? How very awkward! Does she know?"
Seymour pointed a withering finger at his sister.
"Little girls should mind their own business," he said.
"Oh, but it is my business. Nadine matters far more than any one else.She might easily think it not right to marry you if you were in lovewith her."
Lady Ayr turned a petrifying gaze from one to the other.
"She seems a very extraordinary young person," she said. "And in anycase Esther has no business to know anything about it."
"Whether she thinks it right or not, she is going to marry me," saidSeymour.
Esther shook her head.
"You are indeed blind about Nadine," she said, "if you think she wouldever do anything she thought wrong."
"You might be describing John," said Seymour rather hotly.
"Anyhow, Nadine is not like John."
"I see no resemblance," said Lady Ayr. "But it is something to know shewould not do anything she thought wrong."
"When you say it in that voice, Mother," said Esther, "you make nonsenseof it."
"The same words in any voice mean the same thing," said Lady Ayr.
Seymour sighed.
"I am on Esther's side for once," he said.
Esther turned to her brother.
"Seymour, you ought to tell Nadine you are falling in love with her,"she said. "I really don't think she would approve. Why, you might becomeas bad as Hugh. Of course you are not so stupid as Hugh--ah, stupid isthe wrong word--you haven't got such a plain kind of intellect asHugh--which was Nadine's main objection--"
Seymour patted Esther's hand with odious superiority. "You are ratherabove yourself, my little girl," he said, "because just now I agreedwith you. It has gone to your head, and makes you think yourself clever.Shut your eyes till we get to Lincoln. You will feel less giddy bydegrees. And when you open them again, you can mind your own business,and mother will tell you about the Goths and Vandals who built thecathedral. You are a Vandal yourself: you will have a fellow-feeling.Mother, dear, put down that window. I am going to see cathedrals toplease you, but I will not be stifled to please anybody. The carriagereeks of your beef sandwiches. But I think I have some scent in my bag."
"I am quite sure you have," said Esther scornfully. "I am writing toNadine, by the way. I shall tell her you are falling in love with her."
"You can tell her exactly what you please," said Seymour suavely. "Ah,here is some wall-flower scent. It is like a May morning. Yes, tellNadine what you please, but don't bother me. What is the odious town weare coming to? I think it must be Lincoln. John, here is Lincoln, andall the people are ancient Romans."
Seymour obligingly sprayed the expensive scent about the carriage, eventhough they were so shortly to disembark.
"The river Witham," said John, pointing to a small and fetid ditch."Remains of Roman villas--"
"The inhabitants of which died of typhoid," said Seymour. "Tell Nadinewe are enjoying Lincoln, Esther. Had father better be allowed to sleepon, or shall I wake him? There is a porter: call him, Mother--I won'tcarry my bag even to save you sixpence. But don't tell him we aremarchionesses and lords and ladies, because then he will expect ashilling. I perceive a seedy-looking 'bus outside. That is probablyours. It looks as if it came from some low kind of inn. I wish I hadbrought Antoinette. And yet I don't know. She would probably have givennotice after seeing the degradation of our summer holiday."
"Seymour, you are making yourself exceedingly disagreeable," said hismother.
"It is intentional. You made yourself disagreeable to me: you began. Asfor you, Esther, you must expect to see a good deal less of Nadine aftershe and I are married. I will not have you mooning about the house,reminding her of all the damned--yes, I said damned--nonsense you andshe and Berts and Hugh talked about the inequality of marriages whereone person is clever and the other stupid, or where one loves and theother doesn't. You have roused me, you and mother between you, and I amhere to tell you that I will manage my own affairs, which are Nadine'salso, without the smallest assistance from you. Put that in--in yourginger-beer, or whatever we have for dinner, and drink it. You thought Iwas only a sort of thing that waved its hands and collected jade, andtalked in rather a squeaky voice, and walked on its toes. Well, you havefound out your mistake, and don't let me have to teach it you again. Youcan tell Nadine in your letter exactly what I have said. And don't rouseme again: it makes me hot. But mind your own business instead, andremember that when I want either your advice or mother's I will ask forit. Till then you can keep it completely to yourselves. You needn'tanswer me: I don't want to hear anything you have got to say. Let us goto the cathedral. I suppose it is that great cockshy on the top of thehill. I know it will prove to have been built by our forefathers. Theverger will like to know about it. But bear in mind I don't want to betold anything about Nadine."
* * * * *
Seymour had become quite red in the face with the violence of thefeelings that prompted these straightforward remarks, and before puttingthe spray of wall-flower scent back into his bag, he shut his eyes andsquirted himself in the face in order to cool himself, while Estherstared at him open-mouthed. She hardly knew him, for he had becomeexactly like a man, a transformation more unexpected than anything thatever happened at a pantomime, and she instantly and correctly connectedthis change in him with what he had been saying. For the reason of thechange was perfectly simple and sufficient: during those last days atWinston, after the departure of Hugh, he had fallen in love with Nadine,and his nature, which had really been neither that of man or woman, hadsuddenly sexed itself. He had not in the least cast off his tastes andhabits; to spray himself and a stuffy railway-carriage with wall-flowerscent was still perfectly natural to him, and no doubt, unless Nadineobjected very much, he would continue to take Antoinette about with himas his maid, but he had declared himself a man, and found, even as hissister found, that the change in him was as immense as it wasunexpected. He thought with more than usual scorn of Nadine's friends,such as Esther and Berts, who all played about together like healthy,but mentally anemic, children, for he, the most anemic of them all, hadsuddenly had live blood, as it were, squirted into him. Indeed the onlymember of the clan whom he thought of with toleration was Hugh, withwhom he felt a bond of brotherhood, for Hugh, like himself, loved Nadinelike a man. Already also he felt sorry for him, recognizing in him amember of his own sex. Hitherto he had disliked his own sex, becausethey were men, now he found himself detesting people like Berts, becausethey were not. For men, so he had begun to perceive, are essentiallythose who are aware of the fact of women; the rest of them, to which hehad himself till so lately belonged, he now classified as more or lessintellectual amoebae. And the corresponding members of the other sexwere just as bad: Esther had no sense of sex, nor perhaps, and here hepaused, had Nadine.
That, it is true, gave him long pause. He knew quite well that Nadinehad been no more in love with him, when they had got engaged, than hehad been with her. They had both been, and she so he must suppose wasstill, quite undeveloped as regards those instincts. Hugh with all hisdevotion and developed manliness awoke no corresponding flame in her,and Seymour was quite clear-sighted enough to see that there was no signof his having succeeded where Hugh had failed. She belonged, as Dodo hadremarked, to that essentially modern type of girl, which, unless shemarries while quite young, will probably be spinster still at thirty.They had brains, they had a hundred intellectual and artistic interests,and studied mummies, or logic, or Greek gems, or themselves, and livedin flats, eagerly and happily, and smoked and substituted tea fordinner. They knew of nothing in their natures that gave them anyimperious call; on the other hand they called imperiously thoughunintentionally to others. Nadine had called like that to Hugh, and wasdismayed at the tumult she had roused, regretting it, but notcomprehending it. And now she had called like that to Seymour. She waslike the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, calling in her sleep. Hugh hadanswered her first and had fought his way through thicket and briar, buthis coming had not awakened her. Then she had called again, and thistime Seymour stood by her. She had given him her hand, but her sleephad been undisturbed. She smiled at him, but she smiled in her sleep.
* * * * *
The seedy 'bus, of the type not yet quite extinct, with straw on thebottom of it, proved to be sent for them and they proceeded over cobbledstreets, half deafened by the clatter of ill-fitting windows. After aminute or two of this Seymour firmly declined to continue, for he saidthe straw got up his trousers and tickled his legs, and the drums of hisears were bursting. So he got delicately out, in order to take a properconveyance, and promised to meet the rest of them at the west door ofthe cathedral. Here he sat very comfortably for ten minutes till theyarrived, and entering in the manner of a storming party, they literallystumbled over an astonished archdeacon who was superintending somemeasurement of paving stone immediately inside, and proved to be acousin of Lady Ayr's. This fact was not elicited without pomp, for thecathedral was not open to visitors at this hour, as he informed them, onwhich Lady Ayr said, "I suppose there will be no difficulty in the wayof the Marquis of Ayr--Ayr, this is an archdeacon--and his wife andfamily seeing it." Upon which "an" archdeacon said, "Oh, are you SusieAyr?" Explanations of cousinship--luckily satisfactory--followed, andthey were conducted round the cathedral by him free of all expense, anddined with him in the evening, at a quarter to eight, returning home atten in order to get a grip of all they were going to see next day, by adiligent perusal of the guide-books.
They were staying at an ancient hostelry called the "Goat andCompasses," a designation the origin of which John very obliginglyexplained to them, but Seymour, still perhaps suffering from the strawat the bottom of the 'bus, thought that the "Flea and Compasses" wouldbe a more descriptive title. No room was on the level with any otherroom or with the passage outside it, and short obscure flights of stepsdesigned to upset the unwary communicated between them. A further trapwas laid down for unsuspicious guests in the matter of doors andwindows, for the doors were not quite high enough to enable the personof average height to pass through them without hitting his foreheadagainst the jamb, and the windows, when induced to open, descendedviolently again in the manner of a guillotine. The floors were as wavyas the pavement of St. Mark's at Venice, the looking-glasses seemed likedusky wells, at the bottom of which the gazer darkly beheld his face,and the beds had feather mattresses on them. Altogether, it was quite inthe right style, except that it was not a "temperance hotel," for theaccommodation of Lady Ayr on a tour of family culture, and she and John,after a short and decisive economical interview with the proprietor,took possession of the largest table in the public drawing-room,ejecting therefrom two nervous spinsters who had been looking forward toplaying _Patience_ on it, and spreading their maps of the town over it,read to each other out of guide-books, while Lord Ayr propped himself updejectedly in a corner, where he hoped to drop asleep unperceived. Thetroublesome interview with the proprietor had been on the subject ofmaking a deduction from the agreed terms, since they had all dined out.He was finally routed by a short plain statement of the case by LadyAyr.
"If you can afford to take us in for so much, dinner included," shesaid, "you can afford to take us in for less without dinner. I thinkthere is no more to be said on the subject. Breakfast, please, at aquarter past eight punctually and I shall require a second candle in mybedroom. I think your terms, which I do not say are excessive, includedlights? _Thank_ you!"
* * * * *
Seymour had declined to take part in this guide-book conference, sayingwith truth that he felt sure it would all be very completely explainedto him next day, and let himself out into the streets of the town whichwere already growing empty of passengers. Above the sky was lucent withmany stars, and the moon which had risen an hour before, cleared thehouse-roofs and shone down into the street with a very white light,making the gas-lamps look red. Last night it had been full, and from theterrace at Winston they had all watched it rise, full-flaring, over thewoods below the house. Then he and Nadine had strolled away together,and in that luminous solitude with her, he had felt himself constrainedand tongue-tied. He had no longer at command the talk that usually roseso glibly to his lips, that gay, witty, inconsequent gabble that hadtruthfully represented what went on in his quick discerning brain. Hisbrain now was taken up with one topic only, and it was as hard for himto speak to her of that, as it was for him to speak of anything else. Heknew that she had entered into her engagement with him, in the samespirit in which he had proposed to her. They liked each other; eachfound the other a stimulating companion; by each no doubt the attractionof the other's good looks was felt. She, he was certain, regarded himnow as she had regarded him then, while for him the whole situation hadundergone so complete a change, that he felt that the very
fortress ofhis identity had been stormed and garrisoned by the besieging host. Andwhat was the host? That tall girl with the white slim hands, who,without intention, had picked up a key and, cursorily, so it seemed, hadunlocked his heart, so that it stood open to her. Honestly, he did notknow that it was made to unlock: he had thought of it always as some toySwiss _chalet_, not meant to be opened. But she had opened it, and goneinside.
The streets grew emptier: lights appeared behind blinds in upperwindows, and only an occasional step sounded on the pavements. He hadcome to an open market place, and from where he paused and stood thewestern towers of the cathedral rose above the intervening roofs, andaspired whitely into the dark velvet of the night. Hitherto, Seymourwould have found nothing particular to say about moonlight, in which hetook but the very faintest interest, except that it tended to provoke anuntimely loquaciousness in cats. But to-night he found his mind floodedwith the most hackneyed and commonplace reflections. It reminded him ofNadine; it was white and chaste and aloof like her ... he wanted her,and he was going to get her, and yet would she really be his in thesense that he was hers? Then for a moment habit asserted itself, and hetold himself he was being common, that he was dropping to the level ofplain and barbarous Hugh. It was very mortifying, yet he could not keepoff that level. He kept on dropping there, as he stared at the moonlittowers of the cathedral, unsatisfied and longing. But it may be doubtedwhether he would have felt better satisfied, if he had known howearnestly Nadine had tried to drop, or rise, to the moonlit plane, orhow sincerely, even with tears, she had deplored her inability to do so.For it was not he whom she had sought to join there.