WHAT THEY SAID TO EACH OTHER
They walked back through the larchwood with Lynette between them,
keeping them apart, and yet holding a hand of each.
“Miss Eve, where’ve you been all the winter? In London?”
“Yes, in London.”
“Do you like London better than Fernhill?”
“No, not better. You see, there are no fairies in London.”
“And did you paint pictures in London?”
“Sometimes. But people are in too much of a hurry to look at pictures.”
Miss Vance, as much the time-table as ever, met them where the white
gate opened on to the heath garden. It was Lynette’s supper hour, an
absurd hour, she called it, but she obeyed Miss Vance with great
meekness, remembering that God still had to be kept without an excuse
for being churlish.
Eve and Miss Vance smiled reminiscently at each other. It was Miss
Vance’s last term at Fernhill.
“Good night, Miss Eve, dear. You will come again to-morrow?”
“Yes; I will try to.”
Canterton and Eve were left alone together, standing by the white gate
that opened into the great gardens of Fernhill. Canterton had been
silent, smilingly silent. Eve had dreaded being left alone with him, but
now that she was alone with him, she found that the dread had passed.
“Will you come and see the gardens?”
“May I?”
He opened the gate and she passed through.
May was a month that Eve had missed at Fernhill, and it was one of the
most opulent of months, the month of rhododendrons, azaleas, late
tulips, anemones, and Alpines. Never since last year’s roses had she
seen such colour, such bushes of fire, such quiet splendour. It was a
beauty that overwhelmed and silenced; Oriental in some of its
magnificence, yet wholly pure.
The delicate colouring of the azaleas fascinated her.
“I never knew there were such subtle shades. What are they?”
“Ghents. They are early this year. Most people know only the old Mollis.
There are such an infinite number of colours.”
“These are just like fire—magic fire, burning pale, and burning red,
the colour of amber, or the colour of rubies.”
They wandered to and fro, Eve pointing out the flowers that pleased her.
“We think the same as we did last year—am I to know anything?”
She looked up at him quickly, with a quivering of the lashes.
“Oh, yes, if you wish it! But I am not a renegade.”
“I never suggested it. How is London?”
Her face hardened a little, and her mouth lost its exquisite delight.
“Being here, I realise how I hate London to live and struggle in. What
is the use of pretending? I tried my strength there, and I was beaten.
So now——”
She paused, shrinking instinctively from telling him that she had become
one of the marching, militant women. Fernhill, and this man’s presence,
seemed to have smothered the aggressive spirit—rendered it superfluous.
His eyes waited.
“Well?”
“I am on a walking tour with friends.”
“Painting?”
“No, proselytising.”
“As a Suffragette?”
“Yes, as a Militant Suffragette.”
She detested the label with which she had to label herself, for she had
a sure feeling that it would not impress him.
“I had wondered.”
His voice was level and unprejudiced.
“Then it doesn’t shock you?”
“No, because I know what life may have been for you, trying to sell art
to pork-butchers. It is hard not to become bitter. Won’t you let me hear
the whole story?”
They were in the rosery, close to a seat set back in a recess cut in the
yew hedge. Eve thought of that day when she had found him watching
Guinevere.
“Would you listen?”
“I have been listening ever since the autumn, trying to catch any sounds
that might come to me from where you were.”
They sat down, about two feet apart, half turned towards each other. But
Eve did not look at Canterton. She looked at the stone paths, the pruned
rose bushes, the sky, the outlines of the distant firs. Words came
slowly at first, but in a while she lost her self-consciousness. She
felt that she could tell him everything, and she told him everything,
even her adventure with Hugh Massinger.
And then, suddenly, she was conscious that a cloud had come. She glanced
at his face, and saw that he was angry.
“Why didn’t you write?”
“I couldn’t. And you are angry with me?”
“With you! Good God, no! I am angry with society, with that particular
cad, and that female, the Champion woman. I think I shall go and half
kill that man.”
She stretched out a hand.
“Don’t! I should not have told you. Besides, it is all over.”
He contradicted her.
“No, these things leave a mark—an impression.”
“Need it be a bad one?”
“Perhaps not. It depends.”
“On ourselves? Don’t you think that I am broader, wiser, more the queen
of my own soul? I am beginning to laugh again.”
He stared at his clasped hands, and then raised his eyes suddenly to her
face.
“Eve!”
His uttering of the name thrilled her.
“If you are wiser, why are you gadding about with these fools?”
She gave a little nervous laugh.
“Oh, because they were kind to me, because they are out to better things
for women.”
“Have they a monopoly of all the kindness?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. I am an ordinary sort of man in many ways, and we, the
average men, have a growing understanding of what are called the wrongs
of women. Give me one.”
She flushed slightly, and hesitated.
“They—they want us to bribe them when we want work—success.”
“I know. It is the blackguard’s game. But women can change that. The
best men want to change it. But I ask you, are there no female cads who
demand of men what some men demand of women?”
“You mean——”
“It is not all on one side. How are many male careers made? Isn’t there
favouritism there too? I know men who would never be where they are, but
for the fact that they were sexually favoured by certain women. I could
quote you some pretty extraordinary cases, high up, near the summit.
Besides, a sex war is the maddest sort of war that could be imagined.”
She felt driven to bay.
“But can we help fighting sometimes?”
“There is a difference between quarrelling and fighting.”
“Oh, come!”
“There is, when you come to think about it. I want neither. Does
quarrelling ever help us?”
“It may.”
“When it drags us at once to a lower, baser, more prejudiced level? And
do you think that these fanatics who burn houses are helping their
cause?”
“Some of them have suffered very bitterly.”
“Yes, and that is the very plea that damns them. They are egotists who
must advertise their sufferings. Supposing we all behaved like lunatics
when we had a grievance? Isn’t there something finer and more convincing
than that? The real women are winning the equality that they want, but
these fools are only raising obstinate prejudices. Am I, a fairly
reasonable man, to be bullied, threatened and nagged at? Instinctively
the male fist comes up, the fist that balances the woman’s sharper
tongue. For God’s sake, don’t let us get to back-alley arguments. Sex is
marriage, marriage at its best, reasonable and human. Let’s talk things
over by the fireside, try not to be little, try to understand each
other, try to play the game together. What is the use of kicking the
chessboard over? Perhaps other people, our children, have to pick up the
pieces.”
Because she had more than a suspicion that he was right, she began to
quote Mrs. Falconer, and to give him all the extreme theories. He
listened closely enough, but she knew intuitively that he was utterly
unimpressed.
“Do you yourself believe all that?”
“No; not all of it.”
“It comes to this, you are quoting abnormal people. You can’t generalise
for the million on the idiosyncrasies of the few. These women are
abnormal.”
“But the workers are normal.”
“Many of them lead abnormal lives. But do you think that we men do not
want to see all that bettered?”
“Then you would give us the vote?”
Her eyes glimmered with sudden mischief, and his answered them.
“Certainly, to the normal women. Why not?”
“Are all the male voters normal?”
“Don’t make me say cynical things. If so many hundreds of thousands of
fools have the vote at present, I do not see that it matters much if
many more thousands of fools are given it.”
“That isn’t you!”
“It is a sensible, if a cynical conclusion. But I hope for something
better. We are at school, we moderns, and we may be a little too clever.
But if any parson tells me that we are not better than our forefathers,
I can only call him a liar.”
She laughed.
“Oh, that’s healthy—that’s sound. I’m tired of thinking—criticising. I
want to do things. It may be that quiet work in a corner is better than
all the talking that ever was.”
“Of course. Read Pasteur’s life. There’s the utter damning of the merely
political spirit.”
He pulled out his watch and looked at it reflectively.
“Half-past six. Where are you staying?”
“At the ‘Black Boar.’”
“I have something that I should like to show you. Have you time?”
She smiled at him shyly.
“Now and again time doesn’t matter.”
Canterton led her through the great plantations to the wild land on the
edge of the fir woods where he had built the new cottage. It was
finished, but empty. The garden had been turfed and planted, and beyond
the young yew hedge the masses of sandstone were splashed with diverse
colours.
“It’s new!”
“Quite! I built it in the winter.”
She stood at gaze, her lips quivering.
“How does it please you?”
“Oh, I like it! It is just the cottage one dreams about when one is in a
London suburb. And that rock garden! The colours are as soft and as
gorgeous as the colours on a Persian dish.”
Canterton had the key with him. They walked up the path that was paved
with irregular blocks of stone. Eve’s eyes saw the date on the porch.
She understood in a flash why he had not told her for whom he had built
it.
Canterton unlocked the door. A silence fell upon her, and her eyes
became more shadowy and serious as she went from room to room and saw
all the exquisite but simple details, all the thought that had been put
into this cottage. Everything was as she would have imagined it for
herself. She touched the oak panelling with the tips of her fingers and
smiled.
“It is just perfect!”
He took her to one of the windows.
“The vision is not cramped?”
“No.”
She looked away over the evening landscape, and the broad valley was
bathed in gold. It was very beautiful, very still. Eve could hear the
sound of her own breathing. And for the moment she could not look at
Canterton, could not speak to him. She guessed what was in his mind, and
knew what was in her own.
“A place to dream in!”
“Yet it was built for a worker!”
She rested her hands on the window sill, steadying herself, and looking
out over the valley. Canterton went on speaking.
“You can guess for whom this was built.”
“I can guess.”
“Man, as man, has shocked you. I offer no bribes. I ask for none. You
trust me?”
He could hardly hear her “Yes.”
“I know that chance brought us together to-day. May I make use of it? I
am remembering my promise.”
“Perhaps it was more than chance. It was rash of me to want to see
Lynette. And I trust you.”
He stood back a little, leaving her by the window.
“Eve, I do not ask for anything. I only say, here is a life for you—a
working life. Live it and express yourself. Do things. You can do them.
No one will be prouder of your work than I shall be. In creating a
woman’s career, you can help other women.”
Her lips were quivering.
“Oh, I trust you! But it is such a prospect. You don’t know. I can’t
face it all in a moment.”
“I don’t ask you to do that. Go away, if you wish it, think it over, and
decide. Don’t think of me, the man, the comrade. Think of the working
life, of your art, the real life—just that.”
He made a movement towards the door, and she understood the delicacy of
his self-effacement, and the fine courtesy that forefelt her sensitive
desire to escape to be alone. They passed out into the garden. Canterton
spoke again as he opened the gate.
“I still believe all that I believed last summer!”
He had to wait for her answer, but it came.
“I am older than I was. I have suffered a little. That refines or
hardens. One does not ask for everything when one has had nothing. And
yet I do not know what to say to you—the man.”
* * * * *