Please believe I am sincerly sorry if I was rather rough, and don’t have hard feelings about me.
Yours faithfully
[this was crossed out]
Your faithfull friend
TED
PS. You oiled my bat a treat.
I read the letter over several times and was nearly convinced of its sincerity. But a part of me still suspected that it was a ruse to make me take more notes. I had been taken in so often, I had been so green! And I thought, perhaps with justice, that it was all very well for Ted to be ashamed of telling me something that he hadn’t been ashamed of using as a bait. I didn’t guess—what I now think may have been the case—that he was apologizing for the one as for the other.
In any case the letter made no difference. If the prospect of a pleasant Sunday afternoon with Ted learning the facts of life had its attractions, I put it away from me, knowing I should be the other side of England.
My mother believed in the logic of the emotions; she did not think they should be tested, still less regulated, by the lessons of experience. If I had been nice to her ten times running and nasty to her the eleventh, it would upset her just as much as if the ten times hadn’t existed; and if (for the sake of argument; I hope I never was) I had been nasty to her ten times running and nice the eleventh, she would have in the same way discounted the other ten. She relied on the feeling of the moment, and would have thought it “rather wrong” to do otherwise. Unconsciously I had taken after her and accepted her example as a law of life. But now I couldn’t: my emotions had become circumspect and self-protective.
An older person would have seen that the letter needed an answer. It didn’t occur to me to answer it—I was too prone to regard a letter as a present. But there was a phrase in it that puzzled me, so I thought I would seek out Lord Trimingham and ask for enlightenment (to my mind he was still Viscount though my tongue had learned to call him Lord).
At this hour he generally repaired to the smoking-room to read the newspaper and discuss “deep affairs of state” (as Mother used to say when my father was closeted with his friends). Thinking he might be thus engaged, I softly pushed the door ajar and peeped in, ready to take flight, but seeing him alone, went in.
“Hullo,” he said, “have you taken to smoking?”
I wriggled and tried to find a suitable answer. Not finding one, I circled about in front of his chair.
“Don’t do that,” Lord Trimingham said. “You make me giddy.”
I laughed, and blurted out: “Do you know anything about Ted Burgess?”
Now that I had neutralized him, it was safe to mention him.
“Yes,” he said, surprised. “Why?”
“I only wondered,” said I, feebly.
“Oh, you’re thinking of that catch, I expect,” said Lord Trimingham, kindly supplying me with a reason. “Well, he’s quite a decent feller”—I remembered he had said this about the Boers—“but he’s a bit wild.”
“Wild?” I repeated, thinking at once of lions and tigers. “Do you mean he’s dangerous, Hugh?”
“Not to you or me. He’s a bit of a lady-killer, but there’s no great harm in that.”
Lady-killer: what did that mean? I didn’t like to ask too many questions. I did not think, however, Ted would kill Marian; man-killer, that was what I had been afraid of. Now the fear had passed away, lost its reality with the rest of my life at Brandham Hall. I could scarcely believe that I had once felt I ought to warn Lord Trimingham of his peril. The ninth Viscount would never know that I had saved him from the fate of the fifth. By removing myself I had removed the danger; it was my master-stroke. I should not have cared to see it as an act of self-sacrifice even if it had been one; for there is nothing clever in self-sacrifice, nothing to pride oneself on. Considering the scenes that Marian and Ted had made me, it was excusable that I should regard myself as the linchpin of the whole business.
Ever since I had arranged with mother for my recall, I seemed to be living a posthumous life at Brandham, but I still took a retrospective interest in the situation, in what might have happened if I had let it.
“Anything else I can tell you about him?” Lord Trimingham asked. “He’s a bit hot-tempered—a word and a blow, you know—flies off the handle.”
I reflected on this, and then asked the question I had come to ask, not realizing how apt it was:
“What does it mean, getting your rag out? Has it something to do with cleaning a gun?”
Lord Trimingham laughed. “No, it hasn’t,” he said. “But it’s funny you should ask; it means what I just said: flying into a temper.”
At that moment Mr. Maudsley came in. Lord Trimingham rose, and I, after a moment’s hesitation, followed suit.
“Sit down, Hugh, please sit down,” Mr. Maudsley said in his dry, level voice. “You’ve got a new recruit to the smoking-room, I see. Have you been telling him some smoking-room stories?”
Lord Trimingham laughed.
“Or showing him the pictures?”
He indicated a row of small dark canvases, set deep in heavy frames. I looked at the one nearest to me and saw men wearing broad-brimmed hats, smoking long pipes, sitting on tubs with tankards in their hands, or playing cards. Drinking with the men or serving them were women. They wore no hats; their hair was pulled back from high bare foreheads and kept in place by plain white handkerchiefs. One woman was leaning on the back of a man’s chair, watching the card-players with avid eyes: the chair-back pressed against her breasts, which bulged over its rim and were of a dirty colour between pink and grey. This made me feel uncomfortable. I didn’t like the look of the picture or its feeling; pictures, I thought, should be of something pretty, should record a moment chosen for its beauty. These people hadn’t even troubled to look their best; they were ugly and quite content to be so. They got something out of being their naked selves, their faces told me that; but this self-glory, depending on nobody’s approval but their own, struck me as rather shocking—more shocking than their occupations, unseemly as those were. They had forgotten themselves, that was it; and you should never forget yourself.
No wonder the pictures were not shown to the public, for who could want to look at them? And they couldn’t be very valuable, being so small.
“He doesn’t like them,” said Mr. Maudsley, flatly.
I wriggled.
“I thought they might be above his head,” Lord Trimingham said. “Teniers is an acquired taste, in my opinion.” He seemed anxious to change the subject, and said, without changing it very much: “We were talking about Ted Burgess when you came in, and I told Leo he was a lady-killer.”
“He has that reputation, I believe,” Mr. Maudsley said.
“Yes, but it’s no business of mine, is it, what he does with his week-ends?” Lord Trimingham seemed to shoot a glance at me—one never knew which way he was looking—and added quickly: “I’ve been talking to him about joining up. I approached him tactfully, of course—easy does it. A likely man, single—no ties—he’d make a first-rate N.C.O. Of course it’s different with a rifle, but he’s a good shot too, by all accounts.”
“He has that reputation, I believe,” said Mr. Maudsley for the second time. “When did you see him, Sunday? I only ask because somebody noticed him in the park.”
“Yesterday, as a matter of fact,” Lord Trimingham said, “and I went up to the farm. But I’d tackled him about it once before. I’m not much of an advertisement for Army life, I’m afraid.”
He sometimes alluded to his disfigurement, to accustom himself to the idea of it, I now think, and to make those with him feel he didn’t mind. It didn’t always work that way, however. After an uneasy pause Mr. Maudsley asked:
“What did he say?”
“The first time he said he didn’t want to, he was quite happy as he was, and let others do the fighting. But yesterday he seemed to have changed his mind—he thought he’d like to have a crack at them. I said he might never get out there. The situation’s changed since Roberts went into Pr
etoria, though De Wet’s still likely to give trouble in the Transvaal.”
“So you think he’ll go?” said Mr. Maudsley.
“I think he may, and for myself I’m sorry; he’s a good chap and I shan’t easily find another tenant like him. But there you are, war’s war.”
“He won’t be altogether a loss to the district,” Mr. Maudsley said.
“Why?” asked Lord Trimingham.
“Oh, what you were saying just now,” Mr. Maudsley answered vaguely.
There was a silence. I had not quite followed the drift of the conversation, but something in my heart was troubled by it.
“Is Ted really going to the war?” I asked.
“So you’re on ‘Ted’ terms!” said Lord Trimingham. “Well, it’s on the cards he will.”
If only grown-ups would be more explicit! I tried to think that “on the cards” meant some very remote contingency. As I was shutting the door I heard Mr. Maudsley say to Lord Trimingham:
“They say he’s got a woman up this way.”
I didn’t know what he meant, but thought he was perhaps referring to Ted’s daily woman.
19
I HAD TOLD my mother, and myself, that the telegram might arrive by eleven fifteen. Eleven fifteen came, but not my marching-orders. I was not cast down; indeed, I was relieved. My belief that the telegram would come was unshakable and now I had an extra respite in hand, a respite from the respite, so to speak; for I didn’t relish the prospect of breaking to Mrs. Maudsley the news of my abrupt departure (which I had fixed in my mind for Thursday at latest), nor did I know how I should get it to her, since she was in bed. In bed my imagination could not reach her; she might as well have been abroad.
The explanation was, of course, that my letter had been delayed. It would come by the second post.
I spent most of the day with Marcus. We were on excellent terms. Marcus had quite got over the irritation—or at any rate the signs of it—that he may have felt with me on the score of my late success; that wonder had not lasted the traditional nine days and was now but sparingly referred to. We wandered rather aimlessly about the park, speculating what the next term would bring, testing each other’s vocabularies, bandying insults, and offering each other physical violence, and sometimes walking arm in arm. He told me many secrets, for he was shamelessly given to gossiping, a thing I disapproved of but privately enjoyed. Contrary to the proverb, I thought that tales out of school didn’t matter so much. He told me about the coming ball, enlarging on its splendours; he coached me in the part I should have to play. He told me that Marian would bring me some white gloves from London—I didn’t mind missing them, but ah, the bicycle, the green familiar trailing after her: that rankled! He took a program from his pocket and showed it me: Valse, Valse, Lancers, Boston, Barn Dance (“that’s for old fogies like you,” Marcus obligingly explained; “it’s out of fashion now”), Valse, Valse, Polka. Then supper, and again Valse, Valse, and so on, down to Sir Roger de Coverley and Galop.
“But oughtn’t Galop to have two l’s?” I asked.
“Not in French, crétin,” Marcus told me crushingly. “What a lot you have to learn! But I’m not sure we shall have Sir Roger and a Galop: il est un peu provincial, vous savez, to have both. We shall decide at the last moment. Papa will probably give it out.” “And when will the news of the engagement be given out?” I asked. “We may not give it out,” said Marcus; “we rather think that we may let it spread. It won’t take long to spread, I can tell you. But you and I will have been sent to bed by then. They won’t let us stay up after twelve, out of respect for your tender years, mon enfant. Oh, you are so yo—o—oung!” he carolled languishingly. “And do you know what you are as well?”
“No,” I said, unsuspectingly.
“Well, don’t get angry, but you’re just a teeny-weeny bit green, vert, vous savez.”
I hit him and we fought for a bit.
It was all most agreeable and most unreal, hearing of these happenings in which I should take no part. Ever since I came, the ball had loomed up as an obstacle to be got over somehow. I was only just learning to dance, I couldn’t reverse properly, and was sure I should acquit myself badly. But to imagine the ball without being there was another matter.
I didn’t feel that I was deceiving Marcus; such dissimulation as I practised was necessary to my plan—my plan that was to be for everybody’s good. Inconceivable as it seems to me now, I was a man of action in those days, and in action I was a realist for whom the end justified the means. My end, at any rate, was irreproachable. It wasn’t like taking the messages, which could only, I was convinced, end badly, and therefore Marian and Ted were wrong to try to deceive me. Rather Wrong, Very Wrong? Wrong was not a word I had much use for; the idea of Right and Wrong as two gigantic eavesdroppers spying on my movements was most distasteful to me. But surely something which might end in murder must be wrong.
So I listened unconcerned while Marcus talked about the ball, but when, proceeding from the greater to the lesser, he began to tell me of the preparations for my birthday (they were a deadly secret, he informed me), I did have twinges of conscience. And not only of conscience, but of regret. For everyone, it appeared, had something for me; the green suit and its accompaniments did not count—they had been strictly unbirthday presents. “Another thing that’s worrying Mama,” said Marcus, “is the cake. Not the cake itself, vous savez, mais les chandelles. Mama is what do you call it, superstitious; she doesn’t like the number thirteen—though of course everyone has to be thirteen some time, especially you, you saignant baker’s dozen!”
I thought this really witty and looked at Marcus with a new respect.
“But we’ve thought of a way out, only it’s too secret to tell you, you’d blab to everyone. But the great moment, the clou of the evening, if you can understand that, dunderhead, will be when Marian gives you the bicycle. At the tolling of six o’clock the doors will be thrown open and she’ll come in riding it, and wearing tights, she says, if Mama will let her, which I doubt. She may have to wear bloomers.”
I closed my eyes against the enchanting vision and for a moment my old feeling for Marian came back. Too late: the die was cast. It was six o’clock on Tuesday, not on Friday, and at any moment now the telegram would come.
“Are bloomers safer than tights?” I asked.
“Safer, good heavens no, but they’re not so fast.”
“But shouldn’t they be fast, for bicycling, I mean?”
“It’s not that kind of fast,” said Marcus, with unexpected patience, “it’s the other kind, the kind that women are who are not quite-quite. Men can be fast, I think, but then it’s different. Bloomers were fast too, until a woman we knew took to wearing them for bicycling in Battersea Park.”
“I still don’t see why tights are faster,” I confessed.
“Eh bien, je jamais! Ask yourself!”
I did, but got no answer.
“And she wants to wear black tights, too.”
“Are they worse?”
“Of course they are, you owl! Much worse, Mama says. Pas comme il faut—entiérement défendu.”
The shadows lengthened, the light changed, taking on its golden tint. The weather now obeyed the rules; at all times of the day it was exactly what it should be. No caprices, no cloudings over or threat of sudden storms. It was as good as its word, one could rely on it. I have never known again—even abroad, even in Italy—the meaning of “Set Fair.” It was as though the majestic claims of science to absolute certainty had miraculously been realized in the skies. This guaranteed serenity, as of a landscape by Claude, had a curious effect on one’s spirits. One could ask for nothing more, and the stirrings of discontent, instead of finding an outlet in the weather, instead of finding their image in the weather, were silently rebuked by it.
We were turning into the drive, with an idea of going down into the village, when we saw a telegraph boy, complete with red-piped uniform, pillbox hat, and scarlet bicycle, pedalling vi
gorously towards us. My mind was so full of bicycles that his seemed like a materialization, and its colour somehow a mistake.
“A telegram!” we both exclaimed, and Marcus signalled to the boy to stop. I was so sure the telegram was for me that I held my hand out for it.
“Maudsley?” queried the boy cheekily.
“Mr. Maudsley,” Marcus corrected him. I withdrew my hand and fixed my eyes on Marcus’s face, wondering how he would take the news; for I was still sure the telegram was from Mother.
Marcus opened it. “It’s only Marian,” he said, as if a telegram from her hardly counted, “to say she’s coming by the late train tomorrow. Mama told her she hadn’t given herself time for all her shopping. I expect she’s staying on to buy your bicycle. Now let’s go and déranger the villagers—sales types!”
How shortsighted I had been, I thought, to expect my mother to wire! Of course she wouldn’t. A telegram cost sixpence and we had to count our sixpences. A letter summoning me would come tomorrow, if not by the first post, by the second. Another reprieve, another carefree day, in body at Brandham Hall, in heart at home.
Wednesday morning brought Punch. I had to bide my time listening to the chuckles of my elders, which seemed more unrestrained now that Mrs. Maudsley was not there; but at last I got possession of it. I opened it with caution, for (as Marcus had discovered) I could not always see a joke and sometimes had to have it explained to me by an older person, like a sum. So that when I did see one on my own, it was a double triumph. To my delight, the paper was full of references to the heat: they made my single experience seem a universal one. Here was the sun, “The Real Scorcher” (there were, gratifyingly, several jokes about bicycles), bending low over the handlebars, curly rays coming out of his head, a sultry smile on his face; and in the background Mr. Punch under an umbrella, mopping his brow, while Dog Toby, with his tongue hanging out, wilted behind him.
I laughed loudly and ostentatiously, meaning to be heard, for it is something to have seen a joke. But what was this, under the heading “A Great Thought for Every Day in the Year”?