Begin again, p.28
Begin Again, page 28
“I didn’t know you really liked golf, Claud.”
Mrs. Perry reflected that her daughter did not really seem to know very much about this agreeable young man. She did not know he liked chocolate ice; she did not know what his handicap at golf was; she probably had not noticed that a button needed sewing on to his coat. The child was spoilt. She didn’t properly appreciate Claud’s attentions, didn’t seem to take very much notice of him altogether. Mrs. Perry, accustomed to take seriously the comfort of her menfolk, was shocked.
“I should like a game with you some time,” said Mr. Perry.
“Thank you, sir. I should enjoy that.”
“Well—how about tomorrow?” said Mr. Perry heartily. “Quite a good course here, you know—ever played on it?”
“No, I should like to. But I say, you weren’t expecting me—I don’t want to plant myself on you—”
There was an instant chorus of dissent from the Perry parents.
“Very glad to have you,” said Mr. Perry.
“But, of course you are to stay the week-end,” cried his wife. “We were expecting you. Directly Sylvia phoned about the difficulties about the car and everything I said, ‘Well, of course Claud must stay the week-end.’” She believed this heartily as she said it.
“It’s awfully good of you,” said Claud, recognizing at once that the moment had come when polite protestation should topple over into cordial thanks.
“I don’t know why I’ve never thought of offering you a game before,” said Mr. Perry. “If I’d known you were a keen golfer—there’s always Saturday afternoon.”
Sylvia sighed to see her Claud, Claud with his precious Saturday afternoons, transformed into a keen golfer.
“You ought to practice more yourself, Sylvia,” said Mrs. Perry, thinking, in a kindly way, that the child was getting a little left out of all this.
The retort, “I loathe the beastly game,” rose, not unjustifiably, to Sylvia’s lips. It was true. She did loathe golf, and Claud had never said a word about the game recently. If he’d really wanted to play he’d have said so, wouldn’t he? And now mummy and daddy were trying to spoil their lovely Saturday afternoons together by suggesting horrible family games, insinuating that she had been keeping him from playing up till now. Claud wouldn’t really enjoy it. Of course he wouldn’t. Hot resentment mounting within her, she challenged Claud across the table with a look. His eyes met hers with the special intensity that she felt, perhaps foolishly, was for her alone. There was nothing but good temper and merriment in his glance, together with a touch of that expression that she was accustomed to describe to him as “looking disgustingly pleased with yourself.” Darling Claud! He was so pleased at getting on so well with her family. Pleased and just a little provocative. “There you are, you see, it’s quite easy. I know how to manage them.” Well, she wasn’t going to be grumpy just to show him how clever he was. Besides, now that she had decided not to be cross, it was rather nice that Claud should be friendly with them like this. Pleasanter really than always whisking him away from the family. Easier and simpler really if he could drop in to a meal sometimes like this. And of course the family would never really absorb him, because he would always want to be with her most, just as she would always—always (shocking as the admission might be, because one shouldn’t ever talk like that really)—want to be with him.
It was only a moment since her mother had spoken, but the pause was long enough for all these thoughts to rush through her head; long enough for her to decide, half unconsciously, to reject one standard of honesty and accept another.
She smiled and agreed with her mother.
“Yes, I ought to practice more. I will, as soon as this sprain gets all right.”
• • • • • • •
Before she went to bed Sylvia went in to say good-night to Henrietta. Henrietta had been to sleep, woken up and drunk a glass of milk, and was now asserting once more that there was absolutely nothing the matter with her. She was perfectly all right.
“Do tell mummy I’m really all right, Sylvia.”
“Yes, of course I will. But anyway, it’s bedtime now. We’re all going to bed.” The phrase suddenly touched a chord in her memory. That was what mummy used to say when they were children, awake in bed after they should have fallen asleep. Whether Henrietta remembered this or not, she appeared reassured. She sighed, turned over, relaxed and murmured:
“Mummy talks as if I’m ill. It’s so silly.”
But for once Sylvia did not agree with her sister about her mother’s silliness.
“Well, you’ve been giving her a shock or two. You oughtn’t to mind her enjoying herself a little now fussing over you.”
Henrietta shot her sister an inquiring look. It was a new thing for Sylvia to be telling her how to manage her mother.
“It was nice of you to come and look for me,” she said. Sylvia smiled. It was so like Henrietta to slide off at a tangent at the merest hint of a scolding. Sylvia laughed, and suddenly recognized the utter futility of preaching “intellectual honesty” to a creature like Henrietta, to whom beguilement was the breath of life and other people’s approval the only breathable atmosphere.
“What are you laughing at, Sylvia?” murmured Henrietta drowsily.
“I was thinking that you’re so damn lucky. You chose so precisely the right moment to fall off a horse and bang your head.”
“Did I? This has been such a funny day.”
Sylvia contemplated her sister with admiration. A drowsy contented smile curved Henrietta’s lips. Her head was nestled comfortably into the pillow. Her mother had just brought her a glass of milk. Her sister was about to tuck her up and ask if there was anything else she wanted. Secure, surrounded by care, love and affection, she was about to drop asleep in her own home—and probably, guessed Sylvia, very glad to be there. Judged by all the standards on which she had been brought up, she had behaved about as badly as she possibly could. Nobody was going to reproach her. Nobody was ever going to bring it up against her. Everybody was, in fact, going to take especial care never to refer to it again; and if anybody ever did, even by so much as the slightest hint, they were going to feel a tactless, heartless brute.
At this point in her reflections Sylvia gazed down at her sister and reflected, charitably enough, that she wouldn’t have her changed for anything.
“How’s your head, now, Henrietta? Let me tuck you up. Is there anything else you want?”
“No, thank you very much. I’m quite sleepy. Good night, Sylvia darling. I do hope your ankle’s all right tomorrow.”
“Good night, darling.”
When she got back to her own room she found Claud sitting on the window-sill.
“Your father has lent me a pair of pyjamas,” he said. “But may I borrow a sponge from you? I didn’t like to ask him.”
She gave him a sponge and they lingered together, talking at the window. Claud arranged a chair for her to rest her swollen ankle on.
“Claud, I had no idea you were the sort of man who’s good at—well, at picking up the knitting-needles granny drops and that sort of thing.”
“Didn’t you? Perhaps you don’t bring out the best side of my nature, darling.”
“Perhaps I don’t.”
They held hands.
“This is a nice house,” said Claud. He looked out at the dew-drenched lawn and the darkening huddle of trees. “I think I should like to live in the country like this and come down every morning to a breakfast of kidneys and bacon and devilled game and say, ‘James, will you tell Stevens I’ll be riding the new roan this morning?’”
“Yes, and in the evening you could come back and say, ‘James, will you ask Stevens to brush my breeches? I fell off the new roan several times this morning.’”
“Yes, and the next day I could say, ‘James, will you tell Stevens I’ll be riding the children’s pony—the smaller one—today?’”
“No,” said Sylvia, “I should like to live in quite the most extraordinarily modern flat. You know, with even one’s tooth-brush built in, and all the lighting incredibly concealed.”
“Not entirely, surely? Wouldn’t that make it rather dark?”
“And I should have furniture not ‘made’ but ‘expressed’ in Hungarian ash or Canadian sycamore, and a bath you walk down into and a shower-bath of green glass. And whenever I felt cross I should give orders for it to be entirely redecorated on the spot.”
“Whereas, of course, what we’re likely to have,” said Claud, the “we” slipping out unconsciously, “is the basement of a converted house. Two rooms and a woman in three times a week.”
“Yes, and the gas-cooker outside in the passage, so that the saucepans have to be kept on the hat-rack.”
“‘Look-out,’ we shall say to our friends, ‘that’s not your bowler, that tomorrow’s stew.’”
Neither of them appeared depressed by the prospect.
“The bathroom will be on the top floor—five flights up,” continued Sylvia.
“Yes, and we only share it with six other tenants.”
“But even if it is only a small flat,” said Sylvia, with as much nauseating sentiment as possible, “it will nevertheless be a home.”
“Besides, it won’t be a flat if the bathroom’s upstairs, and the kitchen outside,” Claud pointed out.
“Inside it would be so clean and gay and tidy,” said Sylvia in a sprightly voice, “with bright little pictures—framed magazine covers perhaps—on the walls and rosebuds on the curtains.”
“Yes, and all our friends going away would say, ‘What a homey atmosphere. Did you notice the forks?’”
Their laughter was followed by a moment’s silence. Then Claud said softly:
“Darling, you are going to marry me, aren’t you?”
“Oh, darling. Do you think I’d better?”
“Oh, I do. I think you had better really.”
“All right,” said Sylvia, striving, rather unsuccessfully, for casualness. She added, with an awkward little laugh, “Sorry to sound merely obliging. Would you like me to be more romantic?” For some reason she was trembling.
“You are romantic,” said Claud eagerly. “Romantic and obliging and adorable—an extremely fine combination. I am so frightfully glad you’re going to marry me. I was afraid you wouldn’t.”
“But Claud! You didn’t—I mean we didn’t—at least hasn’t it only just—oh, well never mind,” said Sylvia, giving it up. There were so many things one couldn’t say. One couldn’t say, “Surely you knew I would?” because that sounded plaintive and idiotic. One couldn’t protest, as one ought to protest, that they had agreed on a temporary attachment and wasn’t it rather a risk to make it more permanent, because the very sound of the callous calculating phrase “temporary attachment” seemed to jar with the June night, with the words of love that rose in their hearts. One had better perhaps pretend that the idea of marriage had only just occurred to them both, but that, reasoning it out, they found it practicable and workable; and Sylvia, the more conscientious of the two, did try hard for a little to believe that this was what happened. Claud, however, seemed to be suddenly forgetting all his principles. He knelt beside her and covered her hands with kisses. He said he was not good enough for her and never would be. He said he couldn’t imagine himself marrying any one else. She was the only woman he’d ever wanted or ever would want. He said he’d work frightfully hard for her and swore he could make her happy with him. He said she was wonderful, adorable and sweet. He said, finally, that he had four hundred pounds a year, and they could live on that, couldn’t they?
IV
Henry went back to London in a third-class smoker. Stifled by its warm mustiness, he let down both the windows and drank in with relief the undercurrent of coolness that was beginning to thread its way through the evening air. The train was a slow one. It stopped at nearly every station, but Henry was grateful for every pause. It broke the current of his thoughts, it was some distraction to watch the few passengers get in and out. He was going back to an empty house, for his parents were away for the week-end. When he got back it would be too early to go to bed, and when he woke up tomorrow morning it would be too early to get up. Tomorrow he must make himself wash and dress and have some breakfast. He must make himself go for a walk in the park, and go out to lunch somewhere. How long would all that take? Could he make it fill up the whole day?
Never in his life had he so suddenly come to an end of everything. He had said good-by before, but always with eyes turning towards the future. He had been sorry to leave his old school, but there had been all the excitement and interest of going up to the University. He had hated the idea of coming down from Oxford—and yet the prospect of work in London, with Jane taking some job there too, had beckoned alluringly. Now, thought Henry flatly and finally, there is absolutely nothing to look forward to. As if in sympathy with his thoughts the train stopped. He gazed out of the window at an advertisement of Oxo and told himself that he must learn how to forget. A girl passed by the window. Immediately he thought that she had hair rather the colour of Jane’s; only Jane’s was prettier. And then he found that he could not think of the colour of Jane’s hair without the whole of Jane, her ways, her voice, her laughter, crowding into his mind. She was so much at home in his thoughts that he could not immediately turn the key on her, so real to him that, by comparison, she dimmed all else. For three years she had been the ultimate meaning of all he had said or done or thought. No effort of the will could now shut out from his thoughts that lovely visitant. He could not leave her behind him even though he had said good-by and come away. He could not forget her because she had become a part of himself. Even to comfort himself he could not belittle in his mind all she had meant to him these years he had known her.
He was profoundly miserable; and yet, curiously enough, he grew slowly conscious of a feeling at the bottom of his mind that had nothing to do with unhappiness. He was half surprised and half ashamed to discover that somewhere within him lurked an odd sort of feeling of relief. He thought: I shall never be more unhappy than I am now; I shall never really care about anything again. Each reflection brought a surge of misery with it; and yet somehow, as the wave retreated, he knew that some faint grain of comfort had been left lying in his mind. Musing over his wretchedness, he stumbled on the thought, No one will ever be able to hurt me so much again, and saw, dimly, that there was comfort in this and would be more comfort in the days to come. Without admitting it to himself he yet had a glimmering of self-knowledge. In the depths of his mind he knew that somewhere in his misery there was freedom, there was an escape. A nervous strain of which he had only been half conscious, but which nevertheless had been steadily increasing, had suddenly snapped. He thought, without knowing why: I shall never believe in the spider-spirit again, and half saw, and yet edged away from the thought, that herein lay his consolation. It was only after further brooding, further agonizing memories of Jane, of her voice, of the gay, careless, hurtful things she had said, that he suddenly put his finger on the key to his only comfort—Anyway, I chose this for myself. No one but myself has forced this on me.
To this thought he constantly returned, while, all the way back to London the rhythm of the wheels mocked him with a bitter reiteration. “Anybody right about anything,” chattered the wheels, speeding faster over the metals. “Anybody right about anything.” The rhythm quickened till the wheels could hardly spin out the words fast enough, quickened till Henry wanted to scream to them to stop, they could never keep up; and then, with a jarring of the brakes, a jolting and clanging over the points, the train would slow up for a station, and the maddening chatter would subside; but only to be changed to a slower, heavier rhythm—“We’re different, different, different.”
“Oh,” thought Henry, touching the very bottom of his misery as the train clanked finally into Paddington station, bringing him back into the city he had left with such high hopes that morning. “Oh, I shall never really forget. Nothing will ever be really worth-while again.”
But even while his heart assented to this his intelligence told him it would not always be so.
Chapter XV
I
The next morning Florence’s temperature was down to normal. Mrs. Fisher insisted that she should have breakfast in bed. She then allowed her to go and sit in the garden, luxuriously tucked up in the hammock, and thoughtfully supplied with three large clean pocket-handkerchiefs. Leslie, coming to sit with her, found her enormously restored and very cheerful. She was studying a letter.
“I say, Leslie,” she said. “Your mother’s being very sort of kind and helpful. Do you know this Mrs.—What’s-her-name? Burton, it looks like.”
“Oh, the woman with the little girl? Yes, I’ve met her.”
“Do you know what this letter is about? She’s writing to your mother to ask if she knows of any one to coach this child for a year. Apparently she’s to go to school when she’s thirteen, but they don’t want to send her away before then, and they live in the depths of Devonshire or somewhere, where there isn’t a decent day-school. She thought I might like to take it on.”
“Oh. Do you think you would? It would be rather cutting yourself off from everything, wouldn’t it?”
“Well, yes, it would. But I think it would be rather a good experience, you know. What’s this child like—do you know?”
“Oh, sort of ordinary, I think. I only saw her once.”
“The mother says, ‘My little girl, Jessie, is unusually intelligent, but I am afraid is not altogether an easy child to teach. She will not work unless she is interested.’”
“Sounds lazy to me,” said Leslie unkindly.
But Florence already took a proprietary interest in little Jessie.
“Oh, no! Not necessarily. As a matter of fact, a child is often quite right to reject things when they’re not presented to it in the right way.”
Leslie, who had not kept abreast of modern educational reform, found this surprising.
“She went to school once, I think,” she said, “and was awfully unhappy or ill or something. I can’t remember which but anyway I know it was a failure.”
Mrs. Perry reflected that her daughter did not really seem to know very much about this agreeable young man. She did not know he liked chocolate ice; she did not know what his handicap at golf was; she probably had not noticed that a button needed sewing on to his coat. The child was spoilt. She didn’t properly appreciate Claud’s attentions, didn’t seem to take very much notice of him altogether. Mrs. Perry, accustomed to take seriously the comfort of her menfolk, was shocked.
“I should like a game with you some time,” said Mr. Perry.
“Thank you, sir. I should enjoy that.”
“Well—how about tomorrow?” said Mr. Perry heartily. “Quite a good course here, you know—ever played on it?”
“No, I should like to. But I say, you weren’t expecting me—I don’t want to plant myself on you—”
There was an instant chorus of dissent from the Perry parents.
“Very glad to have you,” said Mr. Perry.
“But, of course you are to stay the week-end,” cried his wife. “We were expecting you. Directly Sylvia phoned about the difficulties about the car and everything I said, ‘Well, of course Claud must stay the week-end.’” She believed this heartily as she said it.
“It’s awfully good of you,” said Claud, recognizing at once that the moment had come when polite protestation should topple over into cordial thanks.
“I don’t know why I’ve never thought of offering you a game before,” said Mr. Perry. “If I’d known you were a keen golfer—there’s always Saturday afternoon.”
Sylvia sighed to see her Claud, Claud with his precious Saturday afternoons, transformed into a keen golfer.
“You ought to practice more yourself, Sylvia,” said Mrs. Perry, thinking, in a kindly way, that the child was getting a little left out of all this.
The retort, “I loathe the beastly game,” rose, not unjustifiably, to Sylvia’s lips. It was true. She did loathe golf, and Claud had never said a word about the game recently. If he’d really wanted to play he’d have said so, wouldn’t he? And now mummy and daddy were trying to spoil their lovely Saturday afternoons together by suggesting horrible family games, insinuating that she had been keeping him from playing up till now. Claud wouldn’t really enjoy it. Of course he wouldn’t. Hot resentment mounting within her, she challenged Claud across the table with a look. His eyes met hers with the special intensity that she felt, perhaps foolishly, was for her alone. There was nothing but good temper and merriment in his glance, together with a touch of that expression that she was accustomed to describe to him as “looking disgustingly pleased with yourself.” Darling Claud! He was so pleased at getting on so well with her family. Pleased and just a little provocative. “There you are, you see, it’s quite easy. I know how to manage them.” Well, she wasn’t going to be grumpy just to show him how clever he was. Besides, now that she had decided not to be cross, it was rather nice that Claud should be friendly with them like this. Pleasanter really than always whisking him away from the family. Easier and simpler really if he could drop in to a meal sometimes like this. And of course the family would never really absorb him, because he would always want to be with her most, just as she would always—always (shocking as the admission might be, because one shouldn’t ever talk like that really)—want to be with him.
It was only a moment since her mother had spoken, but the pause was long enough for all these thoughts to rush through her head; long enough for her to decide, half unconsciously, to reject one standard of honesty and accept another.
She smiled and agreed with her mother.
“Yes, I ought to practice more. I will, as soon as this sprain gets all right.”
• • • • • • •
Before she went to bed Sylvia went in to say good-night to Henrietta. Henrietta had been to sleep, woken up and drunk a glass of milk, and was now asserting once more that there was absolutely nothing the matter with her. She was perfectly all right.
“Do tell mummy I’m really all right, Sylvia.”
“Yes, of course I will. But anyway, it’s bedtime now. We’re all going to bed.” The phrase suddenly touched a chord in her memory. That was what mummy used to say when they were children, awake in bed after they should have fallen asleep. Whether Henrietta remembered this or not, she appeared reassured. She sighed, turned over, relaxed and murmured:
“Mummy talks as if I’m ill. It’s so silly.”
But for once Sylvia did not agree with her sister about her mother’s silliness.
“Well, you’ve been giving her a shock or two. You oughtn’t to mind her enjoying herself a little now fussing over you.”
Henrietta shot her sister an inquiring look. It was a new thing for Sylvia to be telling her how to manage her mother.
“It was nice of you to come and look for me,” she said. Sylvia smiled. It was so like Henrietta to slide off at a tangent at the merest hint of a scolding. Sylvia laughed, and suddenly recognized the utter futility of preaching “intellectual honesty” to a creature like Henrietta, to whom beguilement was the breath of life and other people’s approval the only breathable atmosphere.
“What are you laughing at, Sylvia?” murmured Henrietta drowsily.
“I was thinking that you’re so damn lucky. You chose so precisely the right moment to fall off a horse and bang your head.”
“Did I? This has been such a funny day.”
Sylvia contemplated her sister with admiration. A drowsy contented smile curved Henrietta’s lips. Her head was nestled comfortably into the pillow. Her mother had just brought her a glass of milk. Her sister was about to tuck her up and ask if there was anything else she wanted. Secure, surrounded by care, love and affection, she was about to drop asleep in her own home—and probably, guessed Sylvia, very glad to be there. Judged by all the standards on which she had been brought up, she had behaved about as badly as she possibly could. Nobody was going to reproach her. Nobody was ever going to bring it up against her. Everybody was, in fact, going to take especial care never to refer to it again; and if anybody ever did, even by so much as the slightest hint, they were going to feel a tactless, heartless brute.
At this point in her reflections Sylvia gazed down at her sister and reflected, charitably enough, that she wouldn’t have her changed for anything.
“How’s your head, now, Henrietta? Let me tuck you up. Is there anything else you want?”
“No, thank you very much. I’m quite sleepy. Good night, Sylvia darling. I do hope your ankle’s all right tomorrow.”
“Good night, darling.”
When she got back to her own room she found Claud sitting on the window-sill.
“Your father has lent me a pair of pyjamas,” he said. “But may I borrow a sponge from you? I didn’t like to ask him.”
She gave him a sponge and they lingered together, talking at the window. Claud arranged a chair for her to rest her swollen ankle on.
“Claud, I had no idea you were the sort of man who’s good at—well, at picking up the knitting-needles granny drops and that sort of thing.”
“Didn’t you? Perhaps you don’t bring out the best side of my nature, darling.”
“Perhaps I don’t.”
They held hands.
“This is a nice house,” said Claud. He looked out at the dew-drenched lawn and the darkening huddle of trees. “I think I should like to live in the country like this and come down every morning to a breakfast of kidneys and bacon and devilled game and say, ‘James, will you tell Stevens I’ll be riding the new roan this morning?’”
“Yes, and in the evening you could come back and say, ‘James, will you ask Stevens to brush my breeches? I fell off the new roan several times this morning.’”
“Yes, and the next day I could say, ‘James, will you tell Stevens I’ll be riding the children’s pony—the smaller one—today?’”
“No,” said Sylvia, “I should like to live in quite the most extraordinarily modern flat. You know, with even one’s tooth-brush built in, and all the lighting incredibly concealed.”
“Not entirely, surely? Wouldn’t that make it rather dark?”
“And I should have furniture not ‘made’ but ‘expressed’ in Hungarian ash or Canadian sycamore, and a bath you walk down into and a shower-bath of green glass. And whenever I felt cross I should give orders for it to be entirely redecorated on the spot.”
“Whereas, of course, what we’re likely to have,” said Claud, the “we” slipping out unconsciously, “is the basement of a converted house. Two rooms and a woman in three times a week.”
“Yes, and the gas-cooker outside in the passage, so that the saucepans have to be kept on the hat-rack.”
“‘Look-out,’ we shall say to our friends, ‘that’s not your bowler, that tomorrow’s stew.’”
Neither of them appeared depressed by the prospect.
“The bathroom will be on the top floor—five flights up,” continued Sylvia.
“Yes, and we only share it with six other tenants.”
“But even if it is only a small flat,” said Sylvia, with as much nauseating sentiment as possible, “it will nevertheless be a home.”
“Besides, it won’t be a flat if the bathroom’s upstairs, and the kitchen outside,” Claud pointed out.
“Inside it would be so clean and gay and tidy,” said Sylvia in a sprightly voice, “with bright little pictures—framed magazine covers perhaps—on the walls and rosebuds on the curtains.”
“Yes, and all our friends going away would say, ‘What a homey atmosphere. Did you notice the forks?’”
Their laughter was followed by a moment’s silence. Then Claud said softly:
“Darling, you are going to marry me, aren’t you?”
“Oh, darling. Do you think I’d better?”
“Oh, I do. I think you had better really.”
“All right,” said Sylvia, striving, rather unsuccessfully, for casualness. She added, with an awkward little laugh, “Sorry to sound merely obliging. Would you like me to be more romantic?” For some reason she was trembling.
“You are romantic,” said Claud eagerly. “Romantic and obliging and adorable—an extremely fine combination. I am so frightfully glad you’re going to marry me. I was afraid you wouldn’t.”
“But Claud! You didn’t—I mean we didn’t—at least hasn’t it only just—oh, well never mind,” said Sylvia, giving it up. There were so many things one couldn’t say. One couldn’t say, “Surely you knew I would?” because that sounded plaintive and idiotic. One couldn’t protest, as one ought to protest, that they had agreed on a temporary attachment and wasn’t it rather a risk to make it more permanent, because the very sound of the callous calculating phrase “temporary attachment” seemed to jar with the June night, with the words of love that rose in their hearts. One had better perhaps pretend that the idea of marriage had only just occurred to them both, but that, reasoning it out, they found it practicable and workable; and Sylvia, the more conscientious of the two, did try hard for a little to believe that this was what happened. Claud, however, seemed to be suddenly forgetting all his principles. He knelt beside her and covered her hands with kisses. He said he was not good enough for her and never would be. He said he couldn’t imagine himself marrying any one else. She was the only woman he’d ever wanted or ever would want. He said he’d work frightfully hard for her and swore he could make her happy with him. He said she was wonderful, adorable and sweet. He said, finally, that he had four hundred pounds a year, and they could live on that, couldn’t they?
IV
Henry went back to London in a third-class smoker. Stifled by its warm mustiness, he let down both the windows and drank in with relief the undercurrent of coolness that was beginning to thread its way through the evening air. The train was a slow one. It stopped at nearly every station, but Henry was grateful for every pause. It broke the current of his thoughts, it was some distraction to watch the few passengers get in and out. He was going back to an empty house, for his parents were away for the week-end. When he got back it would be too early to go to bed, and when he woke up tomorrow morning it would be too early to get up. Tomorrow he must make himself wash and dress and have some breakfast. He must make himself go for a walk in the park, and go out to lunch somewhere. How long would all that take? Could he make it fill up the whole day?
Never in his life had he so suddenly come to an end of everything. He had said good-by before, but always with eyes turning towards the future. He had been sorry to leave his old school, but there had been all the excitement and interest of going up to the University. He had hated the idea of coming down from Oxford—and yet the prospect of work in London, with Jane taking some job there too, had beckoned alluringly. Now, thought Henry flatly and finally, there is absolutely nothing to look forward to. As if in sympathy with his thoughts the train stopped. He gazed out of the window at an advertisement of Oxo and told himself that he must learn how to forget. A girl passed by the window. Immediately he thought that she had hair rather the colour of Jane’s; only Jane’s was prettier. And then he found that he could not think of the colour of Jane’s hair without the whole of Jane, her ways, her voice, her laughter, crowding into his mind. She was so much at home in his thoughts that he could not immediately turn the key on her, so real to him that, by comparison, she dimmed all else. For three years she had been the ultimate meaning of all he had said or done or thought. No effort of the will could now shut out from his thoughts that lovely visitant. He could not leave her behind him even though he had said good-by and come away. He could not forget her because she had become a part of himself. Even to comfort himself he could not belittle in his mind all she had meant to him these years he had known her.
He was profoundly miserable; and yet, curiously enough, he grew slowly conscious of a feeling at the bottom of his mind that had nothing to do with unhappiness. He was half surprised and half ashamed to discover that somewhere within him lurked an odd sort of feeling of relief. He thought: I shall never be more unhappy than I am now; I shall never really care about anything again. Each reflection brought a surge of misery with it; and yet somehow, as the wave retreated, he knew that some faint grain of comfort had been left lying in his mind. Musing over his wretchedness, he stumbled on the thought, No one will ever be able to hurt me so much again, and saw, dimly, that there was comfort in this and would be more comfort in the days to come. Without admitting it to himself he yet had a glimmering of self-knowledge. In the depths of his mind he knew that somewhere in his misery there was freedom, there was an escape. A nervous strain of which he had only been half conscious, but which nevertheless had been steadily increasing, had suddenly snapped. He thought, without knowing why: I shall never believe in the spider-spirit again, and half saw, and yet edged away from the thought, that herein lay his consolation. It was only after further brooding, further agonizing memories of Jane, of her voice, of the gay, careless, hurtful things she had said, that he suddenly put his finger on the key to his only comfort—Anyway, I chose this for myself. No one but myself has forced this on me.
To this thought he constantly returned, while, all the way back to London the rhythm of the wheels mocked him with a bitter reiteration. “Anybody right about anything,” chattered the wheels, speeding faster over the metals. “Anybody right about anything.” The rhythm quickened till the wheels could hardly spin out the words fast enough, quickened till Henry wanted to scream to them to stop, they could never keep up; and then, with a jarring of the brakes, a jolting and clanging over the points, the train would slow up for a station, and the maddening chatter would subside; but only to be changed to a slower, heavier rhythm—“We’re different, different, different.”
“Oh,” thought Henry, touching the very bottom of his misery as the train clanked finally into Paddington station, bringing him back into the city he had left with such high hopes that morning. “Oh, I shall never really forget. Nothing will ever be really worth-while again.”
But even while his heart assented to this his intelligence told him it would not always be so.
Chapter XV
I
The next morning Florence’s temperature was down to normal. Mrs. Fisher insisted that she should have breakfast in bed. She then allowed her to go and sit in the garden, luxuriously tucked up in the hammock, and thoughtfully supplied with three large clean pocket-handkerchiefs. Leslie, coming to sit with her, found her enormously restored and very cheerful. She was studying a letter.
“I say, Leslie,” she said. “Your mother’s being very sort of kind and helpful. Do you know this Mrs.—What’s-her-name? Burton, it looks like.”
“Oh, the woman with the little girl? Yes, I’ve met her.”
“Do you know what this letter is about? She’s writing to your mother to ask if she knows of any one to coach this child for a year. Apparently she’s to go to school when she’s thirteen, but they don’t want to send her away before then, and they live in the depths of Devonshire or somewhere, where there isn’t a decent day-school. She thought I might like to take it on.”
“Oh. Do you think you would? It would be rather cutting yourself off from everything, wouldn’t it?”
“Well, yes, it would. But I think it would be rather a good experience, you know. What’s this child like—do you know?”
“Oh, sort of ordinary, I think. I only saw her once.”
“The mother says, ‘My little girl, Jessie, is unusually intelligent, but I am afraid is not altogether an easy child to teach. She will not work unless she is interested.’”
“Sounds lazy to me,” said Leslie unkindly.
But Florence already took a proprietary interest in little Jessie.
“Oh, no! Not necessarily. As a matter of fact, a child is often quite right to reject things when they’re not presented to it in the right way.”
Leslie, who had not kept abreast of modern educational reform, found this surprising.
“She went to school once, I think,” she said, “and was awfully unhappy or ill or something. I can’t remember which but anyway I know it was a failure.”
