But she hadn’t.
In our code we attached great weight to facts and very little to intentions. Either you had done something or you hadn’t, and what your motives might have been didn’t matter. A slip counted against you just as much as something done deliberately. If Marian had made a slip, well, then, she must pay for it. That was only logical. But to my surprise I couldn’t think of her in that way, as just an example in an argument. I wished her well, I wanted to be of use to her, my feelings were entangled with hers. I could not disregard her intentions.
For a time I struggled in the unfamiliar toils of moral casuistry. Why couldn’t everything be plain sailing, as it had always been? Why did Marian’s face and presence keep recurring to me, dividing my thoughts against themselves?
And how did I know that she hadn’t wanted me to read the letter—that she hadn’t left it open on purpose, so that I could find out something that would be useful to both of us? As a proof of her regard for me? There might even be something about me in the letter—something kind, something sweet, that would make me glow … gloat .…
It was this hope, I think, that finally decided me, though I went over many other arguments to give me the excuse of meaning well. One was that this might be the last letter in the series: I had practically made up my mind to take no more. And another, illogically, was that to know the contents would help me to make up my mind: if they were sufficiently important, if they were matters of life and death (as I rather hoped), if Marian’s safety was at stake, if she would get into the most frightful row—
Well, then, I might go on with the messages, Marcus or no Marcus.
But I would not take the letter out of the envelope: I would only read the words that were exposed, and three of them were the same, as I could see from upside down.
Darling, darling, darling,
Same place, same time, this evening .…
But take care not to—
The rest was hidden by the envelope.
10
NOT ADAM and Eve, after eating the apple, could have been more upset than I was.
I felt utterly deflated and let down: so deep did my disappointment and disillusion go that I lost all sense of where I was, and when I came to, it was like waking from a dream.
They were in love! Marian and Ted Burgess were in love! Of all the possible explanations, it was the only one that had never crossed my mind. What a sell, what a frightful sell! And what a fool I had been!
Trying to regain my self-respect, I allowed myself a hollow chuckle. To think how I had been taken in! My world of high intense emotions, collapsing around me, released not only the mental strain but the very high physical pressure under which I had been living; I felt I might explode. My only defence was that I could not have expected it of Marian. Marian, who had done so much for me, Marian, who knew how a boy felt, Marian the Virgin of the Zodiac—how could she have sunk so low? To be what we all despised more than anything—soft, soppy—hardly, when the joke grew staler, a subject for furtive giggling. My mind flew this way and that: servants, silly servants who were in love and came down red-eyed to prayers—postcards, picture postcards, comic postcards, vulgar postcards, found in shops on the “front”: I had sent some of them myself before I knew better.
“We are having an interesting time in Southdown”—a fat couple, amorously intertwined. “Come to Southdown for a good spoon”—two spoons with human faces, one very thick, one very thin, leering at each other.
And always, or nearly always, the thin-fat motif; the man or the woman grossly out of proportion, under- or over-sized: the man or the woman, the man or the woman …
I laughed and laughed, half wishing Marcus had been with me to share the joke, and at the same time miserable about it, and obscurely aware that ridicule, however enjoyable, is no substitute for worship. That Marian of all people should have done this! No wonder she wanted it kept secret. Instinctively, to cover her shame, I thrust the letter deep into the envelope and sealed it.
Yet it must be delivered.
I climbed the stile into the water-meadow and at once the sun caught me in its fierce embrace. What strength it had! The boggy pools that fringed the causeway were almost dried up; the stalks that had been below the water-line showed a band of dirty yellow where the sun had scorched them. And standing on the sluice platform I saw almost with dismay how far the level of the river had sunk. On the blue side, the deep side, I could see stones at the bottom that had never been visible before; and on the other side, the gold and green side, the water was almost lost to view beneath the trailing weeds which, piled one on another, gave a distressing impression of disarray. And the water-lilies, instead of lying on the water, stuck up awkwardly above it.
All this the sun had done, and it had done something to me too: it had changed the colour of my thoughts. I no longer felt the bitter shame for Marian that I had felt in the shadow of the trees. Whether I realized the helplessness of nature to contend with nature I don’t know; but my heart, which could not bear to feel unkindly towards her, softened the strictures that my mind was heaping on her, so that the act of spooning, when associated with her, no longer seemed the most damaging activity that a human being could engage in. But it did not help me to find a new attitude; I was too honest with myself to say: “Spooning is all right because she does it,” or “Other people mustn’t spoon, but she can.” After all, she had to have someone to spoon with, and what was right for her—
Almost for the first time I thought of Ted Burgess as her spooning-partner. It was not a pleasant thought. Where was he? Not in the field the men were reaping; I could see that at a glance.
I went down to them. “Mr. Burgess is up to the farm,” they told me; “he’s got a job on there.” “What is it?” I asked. They smiled but did not enlighten me.
It was the best part of a mile to the farm. My thoughts troubled me and I tried to concentrate them on the straw-stack and the pleasure of sliding down it—the one known factor among all these doubtful ones. I still conceived the act of spooning visually, comic-postcard fashion; an affront to the eye and through the eye to the mind. Silliness, silliness, a kind of clowning that made people absurd, soft, soppy.… Pitiful at the best, but who wanted pity? It was a way of looking down on people, and I wanted to look up.
As I opened the farmyard gate he was coming out of one of the stable doors. He saluted me, as he always did; a gesture half mocking, half playful, but with something of respect for me, or for the Hall, in it, which I enjoyed. I noticed that his arm had turned a darker shade of brown, and for this I envied him. It was difficult to connect him with silliness, or with spooning.
“How’s the postman?” he asked. This was a name he had given me. It was the kind of liberty that grown-ups took with children. I liked it from Lord Trimingham, but I wasn’t so sure I liked it from Ted Burgess.
“Very well, thank you,” I said rather distantly.
He gave his battered leather belt a hitch.
“Brought anything for me?” he asked. I handed him the letter. He turned away from me to read it, as he always did, then put it in the pocket of his corduroy trousers.
“Good boy,” he said. And when I looked surprised, he added: “You don’t mind being called a good boy, do you?”
“Not at all,” I answered primly. And then it seemed the moment, and I heard myself saying: “I’m afraid I shan’t be able to bring you any more letters.”
His mouth fell open and his forehead wrinkled.
“Why not?” he asked.
I explained the difficulty about Marcus.
He listened moodily and the vitality seemed to ebb out of him. I could not help feeling half pleased to see him so discountenanced and chapfallen.
“Have you told her this?” he asked.
“Who?” I parried, hoping to embarrass him still further.
“Miss Marian, of course.”
I admitted that I hadn’t.
“What will she say? She counts a lot on getting th
ese notes through.”
I moved about uneasily and he pressed his advantage.
“She won’t know what to do, you see; no more shall I.”
I was silent; then I said:
“What did you do before I came?”
At that he laughed and said: “You’re an old-fashioned one, aren’t you? Well, it wasn’t so easy then.”
I was pleased by this.
“Look here,” he said suddenly. “She likes you, doesn’t she?”
“I—I think so.”
“And you want her to like you, don’t you?”
I said I did.
“And you wouldn’t like her to stop liking you?”
“No.”
“Now why?” he said, coming nearer to me. “Why wouldn’t you like it? What difference would it make to you if she stopped liking you? Where would you feel it?”
I was half hypnotized by him.
“Here,” I said, and almost instinctively my hand strayed towards my heart.
“So you have a heart,” he said. “I thought perhaps you hadn’t.”
I was silent.
“She won’t like it, you know,” he said, “if you don’t take the letters. She won’t be the same to you, you mark my words. You won’t like that, will you?”
“No.”
“She counts on having ’em, same as I do. It’s something that we both look forward to. They’re not just ordinary letters. She’ll miss them, same as I shall. She’ll cry, perhaps. Do you want her to cry?”
“No,” I said.
“It isn’t hard to make her cry,” he said. “You might think she was stiff and proud, but she isn’t really. She used to cry, before you came along.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Why? Well, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Did you make her cry?” I asked, almost too incredulous to be indignant.
“I did. I didn’t do it on purpose, mind you. You think I’m just a rough chap, don’t you? Well, so I am. But she cried when she couldn’t see me.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Because she cried when she did see me. Doesn’t it follow?”
To me it didn’t seem to follow, but I had an inkling of what he meant. Anyhow, she had cried, and the thought brought tears to my own eyes.
I found myself trembling, troubled by his vehemence, by the unfamiliar sensations he had aroused in me, and the things he had made me say.
He noticed this and said: “You’ve had a hot walk. Come on in out of the sun.”
I would rather we had stayed outside; for in the badly lit, sparsely furnished kitchen, with its bare, hard, worn surfaces, its utter lack of the femininity that children of both sexes feel at home with, I instinctively felt that he was too much on his own ground. And though he had moved me strangely, I still did not want to go on taking the letters.
“I thought I should find you in the field,” I said, hoping this would be a safe topic.
“So you would have,” he replied. “I came back to take a look at Smiler.”
“Oh, is she ill?” I asked.
“She’s in the family way.”
“What’s that?” I asked. “Do you mean she gets in your way?” Horses did get in the way, and I thought he might count himself as a family.
“No,” he said, shortly. “She’s going to have a foal.”
“I see,” I said, but I didn’t see. The facts of life were a mystery to me, though several of my schoolfellows claimed to have penetrated it and would have been quite willing to enlighten me. But I was not so much interested in facts themselves as in the importance they had for my imagination. I was passionately interested in railways, and in the relative speed of the fastest express trains; but I did not understand the principle of the steam engine and had no wish to learn. Yet now my curiosity was kindled.
“Why is she having one?” I asked.
“It’s nature, I suppose,” he said.
“But does she want to, if it makes her ill?”
“Well, she hasn’t much choice.”
“Then what made her have one?”
The farmer laughed. “Between you and me,” he said, “she did a bit of spooning.”
Spooning! The word struck me like a blow. Then horses could spoon, and a foal was the result. It didn’t make sense. I put my hand to my mouth, a nervous gesture that I believe dates from that day; I felt my ignorance shaming me like a physical defect.
“I didn’t know horses could spoon,” I said.
“Oh yes, they can.”
“But spooning’s so silly,” I said, and was glad to have said it. It was almost like getting a tooth out. I could not associate silliness with animals. They had their dignity; silly they were not.
“You won’t think so when you’re older,” he replied, with a quietness of manner he had not used to me before. “Spooning isn’t silly. It’s just a word that spiteful people use for something—” He broke off.
“Yes?” I prompted him.
“Well, for something that they’d like to do themselves. They’re envious, see. That makes them spiteful.”
“If you spoon with someone, does it mean you are going to marry them?” I asked.
“Yes, generally.”
“Could you spoon with someone without marrying them?” I pursued.
“Do you mean me?” he said. “Could I?”
“Well, you or anyone.” I felt I was being very crafty.
“Yes, I suppose so.”
I reflected upon this.
“Could you marry someone without spooning with them first?”
“You could, but—” He stopped.
“But what?” I demanded.
He shrugged his shoulders. “It wouldn’t be a very lover-like thing to do.”
I noticed that he used the word “lover” not in a disparaging sense, as I was accustomed to hearing it used, rather the opposite. I wasn’t going to let him impose his standards on me, but I wanted to know what he thought.
“Would it be worse to spoon with them without marrying them?” I asked.
“Some folks would say so. I shouldn’t,” he said shortly.
“Could you be in love with someone without spooning with them?” I asked.
He shook his head. “It wouldn’t be natural.”
For him the word “natural” seemed to be conclusive. I had never thought of it as justifying anything. Natural! So spooning was natural! I had never thought of that. I had thought of it as a kind of game that grown-ups played.
“Then if you spoon with someone, does it mean they will have a baby?”
This question startled him. His ruddy face went mottled, and his cheekbones seemed to stand out under his skin. He drew a long breath, held it, and let it out in a noisy sigh.
“Of course it doesn’t,” he said. “What made you think such a thing?”
“You did. You said that Smiler had been spooning, and that was why she was going to have a foal.”
“You’re sharp, aren’t you?” he said, and I could see him casting about in his mind for an answer. “Well, it isn’t the same for horses.”
“Why isn’t it?” I demanded.
Again he had to think hard.
“Well, Nature doesn’t use ’em same as she does us.”
Nature again! I didn’t find the answer satisfactory, and I didn’t like the idea of being used by Nature. I felt that he was keeping something from me, and I took a fearful pleasure in baiting him.
“Now, isn’t that enough questions for one day?” he said, persuasively.
“But you haven’t answered them,” I protested. “You’ve hardly told me anything.”
He got up from the wooden chair and prowled about the room, every now and then looking down at me with an expression of distaste.
“No, and I don’t think that I will,” he answered almost pettishly. “I don’t want to go putting ideas into your head. You’ll learn soon enough.”
“But if it’s something so nice?
???”
“Yes, it is nice,” he conceded. “But you don’t want to come to it before you’re ready.”
“I’m ready now,” I said.
He laughed at this, and his face altered.
“You’re a big boy, aren’t you? How old did you say you were?”
“I shall be thirteen on Friday the 27th.”
“Well,” he said, “let’s make a bargain. I’ll tell you all about spooning, but on one condition.”
I knew what he was going to say, but for form’s sake I asked:
“What is it?”
“That you’ll go on being our postman.”
I promised, and as I promised, the difficulties in the way seemed to dissolve. Really he needn’t have added that final bribe. I suppose he wanted to make assurance doubly sure, but the softening-up process, as we should call it now, which he had put me through had been enough. He had made me realize something of what Marian and he meant to each other, and though I did not understand the force that drew them together, any more than I understood the force that drew the steel to the magnet, I recognized its strength. And with its strength went a suggestion of beauty and mystery that took hold of my imagination in spite of all my prejudice against it.
But I can’t pretend that Ted’s promise of enlightenment didn’t weigh with me, though I had no idea why I wanted so much to know what spooning was.
“You’ve forgotten something,” he said suddenly.
“What?”
“The straw-stack.”
He was right. I had forgotten it. It seemed to stand for something I had outgrown—physical exertion for its own sake: I felt much less keen about it now.
“You hop up the ladder,” he said, “and I’ll be writing something.”
11
METEOROLOGICALLY Saturday was a disappointing day; the thermometer only rose to seventy-eight, clouds came up—the first clouds I had seen at Brandham since I came—and the sun shone fitfully. And that is how I remember the day—in snatches.
I remember a conversation at the breakfast table. Marcus was having the luxury of breakfast in bed.