Ansell yawned.
“I saw Rickie too. Once I dined there.”
Another yawn.
“My cousin thinks Mrs. Elliot one of the most horrible women he has ever seen. He calls her ‘Medusa in Arcady.’ She’s so pleasant, too. But certainly it was a very stony meal.”
“What kind of stoniness?”
“No one stopped talking for a moment.”
“That’s the real kind,” said Ansell moodily. “The only kind.”
“Well, I,” he continued, “am inclined to compare her to an electric light. Click! she’s on. Click! she’s off. No waste. No flicker.”
“I wish she’d fuse.”
“She’ll never fuse—unless anything was to happen at the main.”
“What do you mean by the main?” said Ansell, who always pursued a metaphor relentlessly.
Widdrington did not know what he meant, and suggested that Ansell should visit Sawston to see whether one could know.
“It is no good me going. I should not find Mrs. Elliot: she has no real existence.”
“Rickie has.”
“I very much doubt it. I had two letters from Ilfracombe last April, and I very much doubt that the man who wrote them can exist.” Bending downwards he began to adorn the manuscript of his dissertation with a square, and inside that a circle, and inside that another square. It was his second dissertation: the first had failed.
“I think he exists: he is so unhappy.”
Ansell nodded. “How did you know he was unhappy?”
“Because he was always talking.” After a pause he added, “What clever young men we are!”
“Aren’t we? I expect we shall get asked in marriage soon. I say, Widdrington, shall we—–?”
“Accept? Of course. It is not young manly to say no.”
“I meant shall we ever do a more tremendous thing,—fuse Mrs. Elliot.”
“No,” said Widdrington promptly. “We shall never do that in all our lives.” He added, “I think you might go down to Sawston, though.”
“I have already refused or ignored three invitations.”
“So I gathered.”
“What’s the good of it?” said Ansell through his teeth. “I will not put up with little things. I would rather be rude than to listen to twaddle from a man I’ve known.”
“You might go down to Sawston, just for a night, to see him.”
“I saw him last month—at least, so Tilliard informs me. He says that we all three lunched together, that Rickie paid, and that the conversation was most interesting.”
“Well, I contend that he does exist, and that if you go—oh, I can’t be clever any longer. You really must go, man. I’m certain he’s miserable and lonely. Dunwood House reeks of commerce and snobbery and all the things he hated most. He doesn’t do anything. He doesn’t make any friends. He is so odd, too. In this day-boy row that has just started he’s gone for my cousin. Would you believe it? Quite spitefully. It made quite a difficulty when I wanted to dine. It isn’t like him—either the sentiments or the behaviour. I’m sure he’s not himself. Pembroke used to look after the day-boys, and so he can’t very well take the lead against them, and perhaps Rickie’s doing his dirty work—and has overdone it, as decent people generally do. He’s even altering to talk to. Yet he’s not been married a year. Pembroke and that wife simply run him. I don’t see why they should, and no more do you; and that’s why I want you to go to Sawston, if only for one night.”
Ansell shook his head, and looked up at the dome as other men look at the sky. In it the great arc lamps sputtered and flared, for the month was again November. Then he lowered his eyes from the cold violet radiance to the books.
“No, Widdrington; no. We don’t go to see people because they are happy or unhappy. We go when we can talk to them. I cannot talk to Rickie, therefore I will not waste my time at Sawston.”
“I think you’re right,” said Widdrington softly. “But we are bloodless brutes. I wonder whether—if we were different people—something might be done to save him. That is the curse of being a little intellectual. You and our sort have always seen too clearly. We stand aside—and meanwhile he turns into stone. Two philosophic youths repining in the British Museum! What have we done? What shall we ever do? Just drift and criticize, while people who know what they want snatch it away from us and laugh.”
“Perhaps you are that sort. I’m not. When the moment comes I shall hit out like any ploughboy. Don’t believe those lies about intellectual people. They’re only written to soothe the majority. Do you suppose, with the world as it is, that it’s an easy matter to keep quiet? Do you suppose that I didn’t want to rescue him from that ghastly woman? Action! Nothing’s easier than action; as fools testify. But I want to act rightly.”
“The superintendent is looking at us. I must get back to my work.”
“You think this all nonsense,” said Ansell, detaining him. “Please remember that if I do act, you are bound to help me.”
Widdrington looked a little grave. He was no anarchist. A few plaintive cries against Mrs. Elliot were all that he prepared to emit.
“There’s no mystery,” continued Ansell. “I haven’t the shadow of a plan in my head. I know not only Rickie but the whole of his history: you remember the day near Madingley. Nothing in either helps me: I’m just watching.”
“But what for?”
“For the Spirit of Life.”
Widdrington was surprised. It was a phrase unknown to their philosophy. They had trespassed into poetry.
“You can’t fight Medusa with anything else. If you ask me what the Spirit of Life is, or to what it is attached, I can’t tell you. I only tell you, watch for it. Myself I’ve found it in books. Some people find it out of doors or in each other. Never mind. It’s the same spirit, and I trust myself to know it anywhere, and to use it rightly.”
But at this point the superintendent sent a message.
Widdrington then suggested a stroll in the galleries. It was foggy: they needed fresh air. He loved and admired his friend, but today he could not grasp him. The world as Ansell saw it seemed such a fantastic place, governed by brand-new laws. What more could one do than to see Rickie as often as possible, to invite his confidence, to offer him spiritual support? And Mrs. Elliot—what power could “fuse” a respectable woman?
Ansell consented to the stroll, but, as usual, only breathed depression. The comfort of books deserted him among those marble goddesses and gods. The eye of an artist finds pleasure in texture and poise, but he could only think of the vanished incense and deserted temples beside an unfurrowed sea.
“Let us go,” he said. “I do not like carved stones.”
“You are too particular,” said Widdrington. “You are always expecting to meet living people. One never does. I am content with the Parthenon frieze.” And he moved along a few yards of it, while Ansell followed, conscious only of its pathos.
“There’s Tilliard,” he observed. “Shall we kill him?”
“Please,” said Widdrington, and as he spoke Tilliard joined them. He brought them news. That morning he had heard from Rickie: Mrs. Elliot was expecting a child.
“A child?” said Ansell, suddenly bewildered.
“Oh, I forgot,” interposed Widdrington. “My cousin did tell me.”
“You forgot! Well, after all, I forgot that it might be. We are indeed young men.” He leant against the pedestal of Ilissus and remembered their talk about the Spirit of Life. In his ignorance of what a child means, he wondered whether the opportunity he sought lay here.
“I am very glad,” said Tilliard, not without intention. “A child will draw them even closer together. I like to see young people wrapped up in their child.”
“I suppose I must be getting back to my dissertation,” said Ansell. He left the Parthenon to pass by the monuments of our more reticent beliefs—the temple of the Ephesian Artemis, the statue of the Cnidian Demeter. Honest, he knew that here were powers he could not cope with, nor
, as yet, understand.
21
The mists that had gathered round Rickie seemed to be breaking. He had found light neither in work for which he was unfitted nor in a woman who had ceased to respect him, and whom he was ceasing to love. Though he called himself fickle and took all the blame of their marriage on his own shoulders, there remained in Agnes certain terrible faults of heart and head, and no self-reproach would diminish them. The glamour of wedlock had faded; indeed, he saw now that it had faded even before wedlock, and that during the final months he had shut his eyes and pretended it was still there. But now the mists were breaking.
That November the supreme event approached. He saw it with Nature’s eyes. It dawned on him, as on Ansell, that personal love and marriage only cover one side of the shield, and that on the other is graven the epic of birth. In the midst of lessons he would grow dreamy, as one who spies a new symbol for the universe, a fresh circle within the square. Within the square shall be a circle, within the circle another square, until the visual eye is baffled. Here is meaning of a kind. His mother had forgotten herself in him. He would forget himself in his son.
He was at his duties when the news arrived—taking preparation. Boys are marvellous creatures. Perhaps they will sink below the brutes; perhaps they will attain to a woman’s tenderness. Though they despised Rickie, and had suffered under Agnes’s meanness, their one thought this term was to be gentle and to give no trouble.
“Rickie—one moment—–”
His face grew ashen. He followed Herbert into the passage, closing the door of the preparation room behind him. “Oh, is she safe?” he whispered.
“Yes, yes,” said Herbert; but there sounded in his answer a sombre hostile note.
“Our boy?”
“Girl—a girl, dear Rickie; a little daughter. She—she is in many ways a healthy child. She will live—oh yes.” A flash of horror passed over his face. He hurried into the preparation room, lifted the lid of his desk, glanced mechanically at the boys, and came out again.
Mrs. Lewin appeared through the door that led into their own part of the house.
“Both going on well!” she cried; but her voice also was grave, exasperated.
“What is it?” he gasped. “It’s something you daren’t tell me.”
“Only this—–” stuttered Herbert. “You mustn’t mind when you see—she’s lame.”
Mrs. Lewis disappeared.
“Lame! but not as lame as I am?”
“Oh, my dear boy, worse. Don’t—oh, be a man in this. Come away from the preparation room. Remember she’ll live—in many ways healthy—only just this one defect.”
The horror of that week never passed away from him. To the end of his life he remembered the excuses—the consolations that the child would live; suffered very little, if at all; would walk with crutches; would certainly live. God was more merciful. A window was opened too wide on a draughty day. After a short, painless illness his daughter died. But the lesson he had learnt so glibly at Cambridge should be heeded now; no child should ever be born to him again.
22
That same term there took place at Dunwood House another event. With their private tragedy it seemed to have no connection; but in time Rickie perceived it as a bitter comment. Its developments were unforeseen and lasting. It was perhaps the most terrible thing he had to bear.
Varden had now been a boarder for ten months. His health had broken in the previous term,—partly, it is to be feared, as the result of the indifferent food—and during the summer holidays he was attacked by a series of agonizing earaches. His mother, a feeble person, wished to keep him at home, but Herbert dissuaded her. Soon after the death of the child there arose at Dunwood House one of those waves of hostility of which no boy knows the origin nor any master can calculate the course. Varden had never been popular—there was no reason why he should be—but he had never been seriously bullied hitherto. One evening nearly the whole house set on him. The prefects absented themselves, the bigger boys stood round and the lesser boys, to whom power was delegated, flung him down, and rubbed his face under the desks, and wrenched at his ears. The noise penetrated the baize doors, and Herbert swept through and punished the whole house, including Varden, whom it would not do to leave out. The poor man was horrified. He approved of a little healthy roughness, but this was pure brutality. What had come over his boys? Were they not gentlemen’s sons? He would not admit that if you herd together human beings before they can understand each other the great god Pan is angry, and will in the end evade your regulations and drive them mad. That night the victim was screaming with pain, and the doctor next day spoke of an operation. The suspense lasted a whole week. Comment was made in the local papers, and the reputation not only of the house but of the school was imperilled. “If only I had known,” repeated Herbert—“if only I had known I would have arranged it all differently. He should have had a cubicle.” The boy did not die, but he left Sawston, never to return.
The day before his departure Rickie sat with him some time, and tried to talk in a way that was not pedantic. In his own sorrow, which he could share with no one, least of all with his wife, he was still alive to the sorrows of others. He still fought against apathy, though he was losing the battle.
“Don’t lose heart,” he told him. “The world isn’t all going to be like this. There are temptations and trials, of course, but nothing at all of the kind you have had here.”
“But school is the world in miniature, is it not, sir?” asked the boy, hoping to please one master by echoing what had been told him by another. He was always on the lookout for sympathy: it was one of the things that had contributed to his downfall.
“I never noticed that myself. I was unhappy at school, and in the world people can be very happy.”
Varden sighed and rolled about his eyes. “Are the fellows sorry for what they did to me?” he asked in an affected voice. “I am sure I forgive them from the bottom of my heart. We ought to forgive our enemies, oughtn’t we, sir?”
“But they aren’t your enemies. If you meet in five years’ time you may find each other splendid fellows.”
The boy would not admit this. He had been reading some revivalistic literature. “We ought to forgive our enemies,” he repeated; “and however wicked they are, we ought not to wish them evil. When I was ill, and death seemed nearest, I had many kind letters on this subject.”
Rickie knew about these “many kind letters.” Varden had induced the silly nurse to write to people—people of all sorts, people that he scarcely knew or did not know at all—detailing his misfortune, and asking for spiritual aid and sympathy.
“I am sorry for them,” he pursued. “I would not like to be like them.”
Rickie sighed. He saw that a year at Dunwood House had produced a sanctimonious prig. “Don’t think about them, Varden. Think about anything beautiful—say, music. You like music. Be happy. It’s your duty. You can’t be good until you’ve had a little happiness. Then perhaps you will think less about forgiving people and more about loving them.”
“I love them already, sir.” And Rickie, in desperation, asked if he might look at the many kind letters.
Permission was gladly given. A neat bundle was produced, and for about twenty minutes the master perused it, while the invalid kept watch on his face. Rooks cawed out in the playing-fields, and close under the window there was the sound of delightful, good-tempered laughter. A boy is no devil, whatever boys may be. The letters were chilly productions, somewhat clerical in tone, by whomsoever written. Varden, because he was ill at the time, had been taken seriously. The writers declared that his illness was fulfilling some mysterious purpose: suffering engendered spiritual growth: he was showing signs of this already. They consented to pray for him, some majestically, others shyly. But they all consented with one exception, who worded his refusal as follows:—
DEAR A. C. VARDEN—I ought to say that I never remember seeing you. I am sorry that you are ill, and hope you are wrong a
bout it. Why did you not write before, for I could have helped you then? When they pulled your ear, you ought to have gone like this (here was a rough sketch). I could not undertake praying, but would think of you instead, if that would do. I am twenty-two in April, built rather heavy, ordinary broad face, with eyes, &c. I write all this because you have mixed me with some one else, for I am not married, and do not want to be. I cannot think of you always, but will promise a quarter of an hour daily (say 7.00–7.15 A.M.), and might come to see you when you are better—that is, if you are a kid, and you read like one. I have been otter-hunting.—Yours sincerely,
STEPHEN WONHAM.
23
Rickie went straight from Varden to his wife, who lay on the sofa in her bedroom. There was now a wide gulf between them. She, like the world she had created for him, was unreal.
“Agnes, darling,” he began, stroking her hand, “such an awkward little thing has happened.”
“What is it, dear? Just wait till I’ve added up this book.”
She had got over the tragedy: she got over everything.
When she was at leisure he told her. Hitherto they had seldom mentioned Stephen. He was classed among the unprofitable dead.
She was more sympathetic than he expected. “Dear Rickie,” she murmured with averted eyes. “How tiresome for you.”
“I wish that Varden had stopped with Mrs. Orr.”
“Well, he leaves us for good tomorrow.”
“Yes, yes. And I made him answer the letter and apologize. They had never met. It was some confusion with a man in the Church Army, living at a place called Codford. I asked the nurse. It is all explained.”