_ Mr. Ansell, a provincial draper of moderate prosperity, ought by
rights to have been classed not with the cow, but with those
phenomena that are not really there. But his son, with pardonable
illogicality, excepted him. He never suspected that his father
might be the subjective product of a diseased imagination. From
his earliest years he had taken him for granted, as a most
undeniable and lovable fact. To be born one thing and grow up
another--Ansell had accomplished this without weakening one of
the ties that bound him to his home. The rooms above the shop
still seemed as comfortable, the garden behind it as gracious, as
they had seemed fifteen years before, when he would sit behind
Miss Appleblossom's central throne, and she, like some
allegorical figure, would send the change and receipted bills
spinning away from her in little boxwood balls. At first the
young man had attributed these happy relations to his own tact.
But in time he perceived that the tact was all on the side of his
father. Mr. Ansell was not merely a man of some education; he had
what no education can bring--the power of detecting what is
important. Like many fathers, he had spared no expense over his
boy,--he had borrowed money to start him at a rapacious and
fashionable private school; he had sent him to tutors; he had
sent him to Cambridge. But he knew that all this was not the
important thing. The important thing was freedom. The boy must
use his education as he chose, and if he paid his father back it
would certainly not be in his own coin. So when Stewart said, "At
Cambridge, can I read for the Moral Science Tripos?" Mr. Ansell
had only replied, "This philosophy--do you say that it lies
behind everything?"
"Yes, I think so. It tries to discover what is good and true."
"Then, my boy, you had better read as much of it as you can."
And a year later: "I'd like to take up this philosophy seriously,
but I don't feel justified."
"Why not?"
"Because it brings in no return. I think I'm a great philosopher,
but then all philosophers think that, though they don't dare to
say so. But, however great I am. I shan't earn money. Perhaps I
shan't ever be able to keep myself. I shan't even get a good
social position. You've only to say one word, and I'll work for
the Civil Service. I'm good enough to get in high."
Mr. Ansell liked money and social position. But he knew that
there is a more important thing, and replied, "You must take up
this philosophy seriously, I think."
"Another thing--there are the girls."
"There is enough money now to get Mary and Maud as good husbands
as they deserve." And Mary and Maud took the same view.
It was in this plebeian household that Rickie spent part of the
Christmas vacation. His own home, such as it was, was with the
Silts, needy cousins of his father's, and combined to a peculiar
degree the restrictions of hospitality with the discomforts of a
boarding-house. Such pleasure as he had outside Cambridge was in
the homes of his friends, and it was a particular joy and honour
to visit Ansell, who, though as free from social snobbishness as
most of us will ever manage to be, was rather careful when he
drove up to the facade of his shop.
"I like our new lettering," he said thoughtfully. The words
"Stewart Ansell" were repeated again and again along the High
Street--curly gold letters that seemed to float in tanks of
glazed chocolate.
"Rather!" said Rickie. But he wondered whether one of the bonds
that kept the Ansell family united might not be their complete
absence of taste--a surer bond by far than the identity of it.
And he wondered this again when he sat at tea opposite a long row
of crayons--Stewart as a baby, Stewart as a small boy with large
feet, Stewart as a larger boy with smaller feet, Mary reading a
book whose leaves were as thick as eiderdowns. And yet again did
he wonder it when he woke with a gasp in the night to find a harp
in luminous paint throbbing and glowering at him from the
adjacent wall. "Watch and pray" was written on the harp, and
until Rickie hung a towel over it the exhortation was partially
successful.
It was a very happy visit. Miss Appleblosssom--who now acted as
housekeeper--had met him before, during her never-forgotten
expedition to Cambridge, and her admiration of University life
was as shrill and as genuine now as it had been then. The girls
at first were a little aggressive, for on his arrival he had been
tired, and Maud had taken it for haughtiness, and said he was
looking down on them. But this passed. They did not fall in love
with him, nor he with them, but a morning was spent very
pleasantly in snow-balling in the back garden. Ansell was rather
different to what he was in Cambridge, but to Rickie not less
attractive. And there was a curious charm in the hum of the shop,
which swelled into a roar if one opened the partition door on a
market-day.
"Listen to your money!" said Rickie. "I wish I could hear mine. I
wish my money was alive."
"I don't understand."
"Mine's dead money. It's come to me through about six dead
people--silently."
"Getting a little smaller and a little more respectable each
time, on account of the death-duties."
"It needed to get respectable."
"Why? Did your people, too, once keep a shop?"
"Oh, not as bad as that! They only swindled. About a hundred
years ago an Elliot did something shady and founded the fortunes
of our house."
"I never knew any one so relentless to his ancestors. You make up
for your soapiness towards the living."
"You'd be relentless if you'd heard the Silts, as I have, talk
about 'a fortune, small perhaps, but unsoiled by trade!' Of
course Aunt Emily is rather different. Oh, goodness me! I've
forgotten my aunt. She lives not so far. I shall have to call on
her."
Accordingly he wrote to Mrs. Failing, and said he should like to
pay his respects. He told her about the Ansells, and so worded
the letter that she might reasonably have sent an invitation to
his friend.
She replied that she was looking forward to their tete-a-tete.
"You mustn't go round by the trains," said Mr. Ansell. "It means
changing at Salisbury. By the road it's no great way. Stewart
shall drive you over Salisbury Plain, and fetch you too."
"There's too much snow," said Ansell.
"Then the girls shall take you in their sledge."
"That I will," said Maud, who was not unwilling to see the inside
of Cadover. But Rickie went round by the trains.
"We have all missed you," said Ansell, when he returned. "There
is a general feeling that you are no nuisance, and had better
stop till the end of the vac."
This he could not do. He was bound for Christmas to the Silts--
"as a REAL guest," Mrs. Silt had written, underlining the word
"real" twice. And after Christmas he must go to the Pembrokes.
"These are no reasons. The only real reason for doing a thing is
because you want to do it. I think the talk about 'engagements'
is cant."
"I think perhaps it is," said Rickie. But he went. Never had the
turkey been so athletic, or the plum-pudding tied into its cloth
so tightly. Yet he knew that both these symbols of hilarity had
cost money, and it went to his heart when Mr. Silt said in a
hungry voice, "Have you thought at all of what you want to be?
No? Well, why should you? You have no need to be anything." And
at dessert: "I wonder who Cadover goes to? I expect money will
follow money. It always does." It was with a guilty feeling of
relief that he left for the Pembrokes'.
The Pembrokes lived in an adjacent suburb, or rather
"sububurb,"--the tract called Sawston, celebrated for its
public school. Their style of life, however, was not particularly
suburban. Their house was small and its name was Shelthorpe, but
it had an air about it which suggested a certain amount of money
and a certain amount of taste. There were decent water-colours in
the drawing-room. Madonnas of acknowledged merit hung upon the
stairs. A replica of the Hermes of Praxiteles--of course only the
bust--stood in the hall with a real palm behind it. Agnes, in her
slap-dash way, was a good housekeeper, and kept the pretty things
well dusted. It was she who insisted on the strip of brown
holland that led diagonally from the front door to the door of
Herbert's study: boys' grubby feet should not go treading on her
Indian square. It was she who always cleaned the picture-frames
and washed the bust and the leaves of the palm. In short, if a
house could speak--and sometimes it does speak more clearly than
the people who live in it--the house of the Pembrokes would have
said, "I am not quite like other houses, yet I am perfectly
comfortable. I contain works of art and a microscope and books.
But I do not live for any of these things or suffer them to
disarrange me. I live for myself and for the greater houses that
shall come after me. Yet in me neither the cry of money nor the
cry for money shall ever be heard."
Mr. Pembroke was at the station. He did better as a host than as
a guest, and welcomed the young man with real friendliness.
"We were all coming, but Gerald has strained his ankle slightly,
and wants to keep quiet, as he is playing next week in a match.
And, needless to say, that explains the absence of my sister."
"Gerald Dawes?"
"Yes; he's with us. I'm so glad you'll meet again."
"So am I," said Rickie with extreme awkwardness. "Does he
remember me?"
"Vividly."
Vivid also was Rickie's remembrance of him.
"A splendid fellow," asserted Mr. Pembroke.
"I hope that Agnes is well."
"Thank you, yes; she is well. And I think you're looking more
like other people yourself."
"I've been having a very good time with a friend."
"Indeed. That's right. Who was that?"
Rickie had a young man's reticence. He generally spoke of "a
friend," "a person I know," "a place I was at." When the book of
life is opening, our readings are secret, and we are unwilling to
give chapter and verse. Mr. Pembroke, who was half way through
the volume, and had skipped or forgotten the earlier pages, could
not understand Rickie's hesitation, nor why with such awkwardness
he should pronounce the harmless dissyllable "Ansell."
"Ansell? Wasn't that the pleasant fellow who asked us to lunch?"
"No. That was Anderson, who keeps below. You didn't see Ansell.
The ones who came to breakfast were Tilliard and Hornblower."
"Of course. And since then you have been with the Silts. How are
they?"
"Very well, thank you. They want to be remembered to you."
The Pembrokes had formerly lived near the Elliots, and had shown
great kindness to Rickie when his parents died. They were thus
rather in the position of family friends.
"Please remember us when you write." He added, almost roguishly,
"The Silts are kindness itself. All the same, it must be just a
little--dull, we thought, and we thought that you might like a
change. And of course we are delighted to have you besides. That
goes without saying."
"It's very good of you," said Rickie, who had accepted the
invitation because he felt he ought to.
"Not a bit. And you mustn't expect us to be otherwise than quiet
on the holidays. There is a library of a sort, as you know, and
you will find Gerald a splendid fellow."
"Will they be married soon?"
"Oh no!" whispered Mr. Pembroke, shutting his eyes, as if Rickie
had made some terrible faux pas. "It will be a very long
engagement. He must make his way first. I have seen such endless
misery result from people marrying before they have made their
way."
"Yes. That is so," said Rickie despondently, thinking of the
Silts.
"It's a sad unpalatable truth," said Mr. Pembroke, thinking that
the despondency might be personal, "but one must accept it. My
sister and Gerald, I am thankful to say, have accepted it, though
naturally it has been a little pill."
Their cab lurched round the corner as he spoke, and the two
patients came in sight. Agnes was leaning over the creosoted
garden-gate, and behind her there stood a young man who had the
figure of a Greek athlete and the face of an English one. He was
fair and cleanshaven, and his colourless hair was cut rather
short. The sun was in his eyes, and they, like his mouth, seemed
scarcely more than slits in his healthy skin. Just where he began
to be beautiful the clothes started. Round his neck went an
up-and-down collar and a mauve-and-gold tie, and the rest of his
limbs were hidden by a grey lounge suit, carefully creased in the
right places.
"Lovely! Lovely!" cried Agnes, banging on the gate, "Your train
must have been to the minute."
"Hullo!" said the athlete, and vomited with the greeting a cloud
of tobacco-smoke. It must have been imprisoned in his mouth some
time, for no pipe was visible.
"Hullo!" returned Rickie, laughing violently. They shook hands.
"Where are you going, Rickie?" asked Agnes. "You aren't grubby.
Why don't you stop? Gerald, get the large wicker-chair. Herbert
has letters, but we can sit here till lunch. It's like spring."
The garden of Shelthorpe was nearly all in front an unusual and
pleasant arrangement. The front gate and the servants' entrance
were both at the side, and in the remaining space the gardener
had contrived a little lawn where one could sit concealed from
the road by a fence, from the neighbour by a fence, from the
house by a tree, and from the path by a bush.
"This is the lovers' bower," observed Agnes, sitting down on the
bench. Rickie stood by her till the chair arrived.
"Are you smoking before lunch?" asked Mr. Dawes.
"No, thank you. I hardly ever smoke."
"No vices. Aren't you at Cambridge now?"
"Yes."
"What's your college?"
Rickie told him.
"Do you know Carruthers?"
"Rather!"
"I mean A. P. Carruthers, who got his socker blue."
"Rather! He's secretary to the college musical society."
"A. P. Carruthers?"
"Yes."
Mr. Dawes seemed offended. He tapped on his teeth, and remarked
that the weather bad no business to be so warm in winter.
"But it was fiendish before Christmas," said Agnes.
He frowned, and asked, "Do you know a man called Gerrish?"
"No."
"Ah."
"Do you know James?"
"Never heard of him."
"He's my year too. He got a blue for hockey his second term."
"I know nothing about the 'Varsity."
Rickie winced at the abbreviation "'Varsity." It was at that time
the proper thing to speak of "the University."
"I haven't the time," pursued Mr. Dawes.
"No, no," said Rickie politely.
"I had the chance of being an Undergrad, myself, and, by Jove,
I'm thankful I didn't!"
"Why?" asked Agnes, for there was a pause.
"Puts you back in your profession. Men who go there first, before
the Army, start hopelessly behind. The same with the Stock
Exchange or Painting. I know men in both, and they've never
caught up the time they lost in the 'Varsity--unless, of course,
you turn parson."
"I love Cambridge," said she. "All those glorious buildings, and
every one so happy and running in and out of each other's rooms
all day long."
"That might make an Undergrad happy, but I beg leave to state it
wouldn't me. I haven't four years to throw away for the sake of
being called a 'Varsity man and hobnobbing with Lords."
Rickie was prepared to find his old schoolfellow ungrammatical
and bumptious, but he was not prepared to find him peevish.
Athletes, he believed, were simple, straightforward people, cruel
and brutal if you like, but never petty. They knocked you down
and hurt you, and then went on their way rejoicing. For this,
Rickie thought, there is something to be said: he had escaped the
sin of despising the physically strong--a sin against which the
physically weak must guard. But here was Dawes returning again
and again to the subject of the University, full of transparent
jealousy and petty spite, nagging, nagging, nagging, like a
maiden lady who has not been invited to a tea-party. Rickie
wondered whether, after all, Ansell and the extremists might not
be right, and bodily beauty and strength be signs of the soul's
damnation.
He glanced at Agnes. She was writing down some orderings for the
tradespeople on a piece of paper. Her handsome face was intent on
the work. The bench on which she and Gerald were sitting had no
back, but she sat as straight as a dart. He, though strong enough
to sit straight, did not take the trouble.
"Why don't they talk to each other?" thought Rickie.
"Gerald, give this paper to the cook."
"I can give it to the other slavey, can't I?"
"She'd be dressing."
"Well, there's Herbert."
"He's busy. Oh, you know where the kitchen is. Take it to the
cook."
He disappeared slowly behind the tree.
"What do you think of him?" she immediately asked. He murmured
civilly.
"Has he changed since he was a schoolboy?"
"In a way."
"Do tell me all about him. Why won't you?"
She might have seen a flash of horror pass over Rickie's face.
The horror disappeared, for, thank God, he was now a man, whom
civilization protects. But he and Gerald had met, as it were,
behind the scenes, before our decorous drama opens, and there the
elder boy had done things to him--absurd things, not worth
chronicling separately. An apple-pie bed is nothing; pinches,
kicks, boxed ears, twisted arms, pulled hair, ghosts at night,
inky books, befouled photographs, amount to very little by
themselves. But let them be united and continuous, and you have a
hell that no grown-up devil can devise. Between Rickie and Gerald
there lay a shadow that darkens life more often than we suppose.
The bully and his victim never quite forget their first
relations. They meet in clubs and country houses, and clap one
another on the back; but in both the memory is green of a more
strenuous day, when they were boys together.
He tried to say, "He was the right kind of boy, and I was the
wrong kind." But Cambridge would not let him smooth the situation
over by self-belittlement. If he had been the wrong kind of boy,
Gerald had been a worse kind. He murmured, "We are different,
very," and Miss Pembroke, perhaps suspecting something, asked no
more. But she kept to the subject of Mr. Dawes, humorously
depreciating her lover and discussing him without reverence.
Rickie laughed, but felt uncomfortable. When people were engaged,
he felt that they should be outside criticism. Yet here he was
criticizing. He could not help it. He was dragged in.
"I hope his ankle is better."
"Never was bad. He's always fussing over something."
"He plays next week in a match, I think Herbert says."
"I dare say he does."
"Shall we be going?"
"Pray go if you like. I shall stop at home. I've had enough of
cold feet."
It was all very colourless and odd.
Gerald returned, saying, "I can't stand your cook. What's she
want to ask me questions for? I can't stand talking to servants.
I say, 'If I speak to you, well and good'--and it's another thing
besides if she were pretty."
"Well, I hope our ugly cook will have lunch ready in a minute,"
said Agnes. "We're frightfully unpunctual this morning, and I
daren't say anything, because it was the same yesterday, and if I
complain again they might leave. Poor Rickie must be starved."
"Why, the Silts gave me all these sandwiches and I've never eaten
them. They always stuff one."
"And you thought you'd better, eh?" said Mr. Dawes, "in case you
weren't stuffed here."
Miss Pembroke, who house-kept somewhat economically, looked
annoyed.
The voice of Mr. Pembroke was now heard calling from the house,
"Frederick! Frederick! My dear boy, pardon me. It was an
important letter about the Church Defence, otherwise--. Come in
and see your room."
He was glad to quit the little lawn. He had learnt too much
there. It was dreadful: they did not love each other.
More dreadful even than the case of his father and mother, for
they, until they married, had got on pretty well. But this man
was already rude and brutal and cold: he was still the school
bully who twisted up the arms of little boys, and ran pins into
them at chapel, and struck them in the stomach when they were
swinging on the horizontal bar. Poor Agnes; why ever had she done
it? Ought not somebody to interfere?
He had forgotten his sandwiches, and went back to get them.
Gerald and Agnes were locked in each other's arms.
He only looked for a moment, but the sight burnt into his brain.
The man's grip was the stronger. He had drawn the woman on to his
knee, was pressing her, with all his strength, against him.
Already her hands slipped off him, and she whispered, "Don't you
hurt--" Her face had no expression. It stared at the intruder
and never saw him. Then her lover kissed it, and immediately it
shone with mysterious beauty, like some star.
Rickie limped away without the sandwiches, crimson and afraid. He
thought, "Do such things actually happen?" and he seemed to be
looking down coloured valleys. Brighter they glowed, till gods of
pure flame were born in them, and then he was looking at
pinnacles of virgin snow. While Mr. Pembroke talked, the riot of
fair images increased.
They invaded his being and lit lamps at unsuspected shrines.
Their orchestra commenced in that suburban house, where he had to
stand aside for the maid to carry in the luncheon. Music flowed
past him like a river. He stood at the springs of creation and
heard the primeval monotony. Then an obscure instrument gave out
a little phrase.
The river continued unheeding. The phrase was repeated and a
listener might know it was a fragment of the Tune of tunes.
Nobler instruments accepted it, the clarionet protected, the
brass encouraged, and it rose to the surface to the whisper of
violins. In full unison was Love born, flame of the flame,
flushing the dark river beneath him and the virgin snows above.
His wings were infinite, his youth eternal; the sun was a jewel
on his finger as he passed it in benediction over the world.
Creation, no longer monotonous, acclaimed him, in widening
melody, in brighter radiances. Was Love a column of fire? Was he
a torrent of song? Was he greater than either--the touch of a man
on a woman?
It was the merest accident that Rickie had not been disgusted.
But this he could not know.
Mr. Pembroke, when he called the two dawdlers into lunch, was
aware of a hand on his arm and a voice that murmured, "Don't--
they may be happy."
He stared, and struck the gong. To its music they approached,
priest and high priestess.
"Rickie, can I give these sandwiches to the boot boy?" said the
one. "He would love them."
"The gong! Be quick! The gong!"
"Are you smoking before lunch?" said the other.
But they had got into heaven, and nothing could get them out of
it. Others might think them surly or prosaic. He knew. He could
remember every word they spoke. He would treasure every motion,
every glance of either, and so in time to come, when the gates of
heaven had shut, some faint radiance, some echo of wisdom might
remain with him outside.
As a matter of fact, he saw them very little during his visit. He
checked himself because he was unworthy. What right had he to
pry, even in the spirit, upon their bliss? It was no crime to
have seen them on the lawn. It would be a crime to go to it
again. He tried to keep himself and his thoughts away, not
because he was ascetic, but because they would not like it if
they knew. This behaviour of his suited them admirably. And when
any gracious little thing occurred to them--any little thing that
his sympathy had contrived and allowed--they put it down to
chance or to each other.
So the lovers fall into the background. They are part of the
distant sunrise, and only the mountains speak to them. Rickie
talks to Mr. Pembroke, amidst the unlit valleys of our
over-habitable world. _