"It's a pity they should have chosen the day of the Eton and Harrow
match for the funeral," old General Grego was saying as he stood, his
top hat in his hand, under the shadow of the lych gate, wiping his face
with his handkerchief.
Mr. Hutton overheard the remark and with difficulty restrained a desire
to inflict grievous bodily pain on the General. He would have liked to
hit the old brute in the middle of his big red face. Monstrous great
mulberry, spotted with meal! Was there no respect for the dead? Did
nobody care? In theory he didn't much care; let the dead bury their
dead. But here, at the graveside, he had found himself actually sobbing.
Poor Emily, they had been pretty happy once. Now she was lying at the
bottom of a seven-foot hole. And here was Grego complaining that he
couldn't go to the Eton and Harrow match.
Mr. Hutton looked round at the groups of black figures that were
drifting slowly out of the churchyard towards the fleet of cabs and
motors assembled in the road outside. Against the brilliant background
of the July grass and flowers and foliage, they had a horribly alien and
unnatural appearance. It pleased him to think that all these people
would soon be dead, too.
That evening Mr. Hutton sat up late in his library reading the life of
Milton. There was no particular reason why he should have chosen Milton;
it was the book that first came to hand, that was all. It was after
midnight when he had finished. He got up from his armchair, unbolted the
French windows, and stepped out on to the little paved terrace. The
night was quiet and clear. Mr. Hutton looked at the stars and at the
holes between them, dropped his eyes to the dim lawns and hueless
flowers of the garden, and let them wander over the farther landscape,
black and grey under the moon.
He began to think with a kind of confused violence. There were the
stars, there was Milton. A man can be somehow the peer of stars and
night. Greatness, nobility. But is there seriously a difference between
the noble and the ignoble? Milton, the stars, death, and
himself--himself. The soul, the body; the higher and the lower nature.
Perhaps there was something in it, after all. Milton had a god on his
side and righteousness. What had he? Nothing, nothing whatever. There
were only Doris's little breasts. What was the point of it all? Milton,
the stars, death, and Emily in her grave, Doris and himself--always
himself....
Oh, he was a futile and disgusting being. Everything convinced him of
it. It was a solemn moment. He spoke aloud: "I will, I will." The sound
of his own voice in the darkness was appalling; it seemed to him that he
had sworn that infernal oath which binds even the gods: "I will, I
will." There had been New Year's days and solemn anniversaries in the
past, when he had felt the same contritions and recorded similar
resolutions. They had all thinned away, these resolutions, like smoke,
into nothingness. But this was a greater moment and he had pronounced a
more fearful oath. In the future it was to be different. Yes, he would
live by reason, he would be industrious, he would curb his appetites, he
would devote his life to some good purpose. It was resolved and it would
be so.
In practice he saw himself spending his mornings in agricultural
pursuits, riding round with the bailiff, seeing that his land was farmed
in the best modern way--silos and artificial manures and continuous
cropping, and all that. The remainder of the day should be devoted to
serious study. There was that book he had been intending to write for so
long--_The Effect of Diseases on Civilisation_.
Mr. Hutton went to bed humble and contrite, but with a sense that grace
had entered into him. He slept for seven and a half hours, and woke to
find the sun brilliantly shining. The emotions of the evening before had
been transformed by a good night's rest into his customary cheerfulness.
It was not until a good many seconds after his return to conscious life
that he remembered his resolution, his Stygian oath. Milton and death
seemed somehow different in the sunlight. As for the stars, they were
not there. But the resolutions were good; even in the daytime he could
see that. He had his horse saddled after breakfast, and rode round the
farm with the bailiff. After luncheon he read Thucydides on the plague
at Athens. In the evening he made a few notes on malaria in Southern
Italy. While he was undressing he remembered that there was a good
anecdote in Skelton's jest-book about the Sweating Sickness. He would
have made a note of it if only he could have found a pencil.
On the sixth morning of his new life Mr. Hutton found among his
correspondence an envelope addressed in that peculiarly vulgar
handwriting which he knew to be Doris's. He opened it, and began to
read. She didn't know what to say; words were so inadequate. His wife
dying like that, and so suddenly--it was too terrible. Mr. Hutton
sighed, but his interest revived somewhat as he read on:
"Death is so frightening, I never think of it when I can help it.
But when something like this happens, or when I am feeling ill or
depressed, then I can't help remembering it is there so close, and
I think about all the wicked things I have done and about you and
me, and I wonder what will happen, and I am so frightened. I am so
lonely, Teddy Bear, and so unhappy, and I don't know what to do. I
can't get rid of the idea of dying, I am so wretched and helpless
without you. I didn't mean to write to you; I meant to wait till
you were out of mourning and could come and see me again, but I was
so lonely and miserable, Teddy Bear, I had to write. I couldn't
help it. Forgive me, I want you so much; I have nobody in the world
but you. You are so good and gentle and understanding; there is
nobody like you. I shall never forget how good and kind you have
been to me, and you are so clever and know so much, I can t
understand how you ever came to pay any attention to me, I am so
dull and stupid, much less like me and love me, because you do love
me a little, don't you, Teddy Bear?"
Mr. Hutton was touched with shame and remorse. To be thanked like this,
worshipped for having seduced the girl--it was too much. It had just
been a piece of imbecile wantonness. Imbecile, idiotic: there was no
other way to describe it. For, when all was said, he had derived very
little pleasure from it. Taking all things together, he had probably
been more bored than amused. Once upon a time he had believed himself to
be a hedonist. But to be a hedonist implies a certain process of
reasoning, a deliberate choice of known pleasures, a rejection of known
pains. This had been done without reason, against it. For he knew
beforehand--so well, so well--that there was no interest or pleasure to
be derived from these wretched affairs. And yet each time the vague itch
came upon him he succumbed, involving himself once more in the old
stupidity. There had been Maggie, his wife's maid, and Edith, the girl
on the farm, and Mrs. Pringle, and the waitress in London, and
others--there seemed to be dozens of them. It had all been so stale and
boring. He knew it would be; he always knew. And yet, and yet....
Experience doesn't teach.
Poor little Doris! He would write to her kindly, comfortingly, but he
wouldn't see her again. A servant came to tell him that his horse was
saddled and waiting. He mounted and rode off. That morning the old
bailiff was more irritating than usual.
* * * * *
Five days later Doris and Mr. Hutton ware sitting together on the pier
at Southend; Doris, in white muslin with pink garnishings, radiated
happiness; Mr. Hutton, legs outstretched and chair tilted, had pushed
the panama back from his forehead, and was trying to feel like a
tripper. That night, when Doris was asleep, breathing and warm by his
side, he recaptured, in this moment of darkness and physical fatigue,
the rather cosmic emotion which had possessed him that evening, not a
fortnight ago, when he had made his great resolution. And so his solemn
oath had already gone the way of so many other resolutions. Unreason had
triumphed; at the first itch of desire he had given way. He was
hopeless, hopeless.
For a long time he lay with closed eyes, ruminating his humiliation. The
girl stirred in her sleep, Mr. Hutton turned over and looked in her
direction. Enough faint light crept in between the half-drawn curtains
to show her bare arm and shoulder, her neck, and the dark tangle of hair
on the pillow. She was beautiful, desirable. Why did he lie there
moaning over his sins? What did it matter? If he were hopeless, then so
be it; he would make the best of his hopelessness. A glorious sense of
irresponsibility suddenly filled him. He was free, magnificently free.
In a kind of exaltation he drew the girl towards him. She woke,
bewildered, almost frightened under his rough kisses.
The storm of his desire subsided into a kind of serene merriment. The
whole atmosphere seemed to be quivering with enormous silent laughter.
"Could anyone love you as much as I do, Teddy Bear?" The question came
faintly from distant worlds of love.
"I think I know somebody who does," Mr. Hutton replied. The submarine
laughter was swelling, rising, ready to break the surface of silence and
resound.
"Who? Tell me. What do you mean?" The voice had come very close; charged
with suspicion, anguish, indignation, it belonged to this immediate
world.
"A--ah!"
"Who?"
"You'll never guess." Mr. Hutton kept up the joke until it began to grow
tedious, and then pronounced the name "Janet Spence."
Doris was incredulous. "Miss Spence of the Manor? That old woman?" It
was too ridiculous. Mr. Hutton laughed too.
"But it's quite true," he said. "She adores me." Oh, the vast joke. He
would go and see her as soon as he returned--see and conquer. "I believe
she wants to marry me," he added.
"But you wouldn't ... you don't intend...."
The air was fairly crepitating with humour. Mr. Hutton laughed aloud. "I
intend to marry you," he said. It seemed to him the best joke he had
ever made in his life.
When Mr. Hutton left Southend he was once more a married man. It was
agreed that, for the time being, the fact should be kept secret. In the
autumn they would go abroad together, and the world should be informed.
Meanwhile he was to go back to his own house and Doris to hers.
The day after his return he walked over in the afternoon to see Miss
Spence. She received him with the old Gioconda.
"I was expecting you to come."
"I couldn't keep away," Mr. Hutton gallantly replied.
They sat in the summer-house. It was a pleasant place--a little old
stucco temple bowered among dense bushes of evergreen. Miss Spence had
left her mark on it by hanging up over the seat a blue-and-white Della
Robbia plaque.
"I am thinking of going to Italy this autumn," said Mr. Hutton. He felt
like a ginger-beer bottle, ready to pop with bubbling humorous
excitement.
"Italy...." Miss Spence closed her eyes ecstatically. "I feel drawn
there too."
"Why not let yourself be drawn?"
"I don't know. One somehow hasn't the energy and initiative to set out
alone."
"Alone...." Ah, sound of guitars and throaty singing. "Yes, travelling
alone isn't much fun."
Miss Spence lay back in her chair without speaking. Her eyes were still
closed. Mr. Hutton stroked his moustache. The silence prolonged itself
for what seemed a very long time.
Pressed to stay to dinner, Mr. Hutton did not refuse. The fun had hardly
started. The table was laid in the loggia. Through its arches they
looked out on to the sloping garden, to the valley below and the
farther hills. Light ebbed away; the heat and silence were oppressive. A
huge cloud was mounting up the sky, and there were distant breathings of
thunder. The thunder drew nearer, a wind began to blow, and the first
drops of rain fell. The table was cleared. Miss Spence and Mr. Hutton
sat on in the growing darkness.
Miss Spence broke a long silence by saying meditatively.
"I think everyone has a right to a certain amount of happiness, don't
you?"
"Most certainly." But what was she leading up to? Nobody makes
generalisations about life unless they mean to talk about themselves.
Happiness: he looked back on his own life, and saw a cheerful, placid
existence disturbed by no great griefs or discomforts or alarms. He had
always had money and freedom; he had been able to do very much as he
wanted. Yes, he supposed he had been happy--happier than most men. And
now he was not merely happy; he had discovered in irresponsibility the
secret of gaiety. He was about to say something about his happiness when
Miss Spence went on speaking.
"People like you and me have a right to be happy some time in our
lives."
"Me?" said Mr. Hutton surprised.
"Poor Henry! Fate hasn't treated either of us very well."
"Oh, well, it might have treated me worse."
"You re being cheerful. That's brave of you. But don't think I can't see
behind the mask."
Miss Spence spoke louder and louder as the rain came down more and more
heavily. Periodically the thunder cut across her utterances. She talked
on, shouting against the noise.
"I have understood you so well and for so long."
A flash revealed her, aimed and intent, leaning towards him. Her eyes
were two profound and menacing gun-barrels. The darkness re-engulfed
her.
"You were a lonely soul seeking a companion soul. I could sympathise
with you in your solitude. Your marriage ..."
The thunder cut short the sentence. Miss Spence's voice became audible
once more with the words:
"... could offer no companionship to a man of your stamp. You needed a
soul mate."
A soul mate--he! a soul mate. It was incredibly fantastic. Georgette
Leblanc, the ex-soul mate of Maurice Maeterlinck. He had seen that in
the paper a few days ago. So it was thus that Janet Spence had painted
him in her imagination--a soul-mater. And for Doris he was a picture of
goodness and the cleverest man in the world. And actually, really, he
was what?--Who knows?
"My heart went out to you. I could understand; I was lonely, too." Miss
Spence laid her hand on his knee. "You were so patient." Another flash.
She was still aimed, dangerously. "You never complained. But I could
guess--I could guess."
"How wonderful of you!" So he was an _âme incomprise_.
"Only a woman's intuition...."
The thunder crashed and rumbled, died away, and only the sound of the
rain was left. The thunder was his laughter, magnified, externalised.
Flash and crash, there it was again, right on top of them.
"Don't you feel that you have within you something that is akin to this
storm?" He could imagine her leaning forward as she uttered the words.
"Passion makes one the equal of the elements."
What was his gambit now? Why, obviously, he should have said "Yes," and
ventured on some unequivocal gesture. But Mr. Hutton suddenly took
fright. The ginger beer in him had gone flat. The woman was
serious--terribly serious. He was appalled.