Arthur had never loved her. With a gleam of fierceness. As though there
was a streak of anger in his love.
“Why do you endure it?” he fretted. “Why do you endure it?”
But he was irritable, absurd about many little things. He could lose his
temper over games; particularly if Arthur played too.
Yet there was a power about Oswald. It was a quality that made her fear
him and herself. She feared for the freedom of her spirit. If ever she
became Oswald’s she would become his much more than she had ever been
Arthur’s. There was something about him that was real and commanding, in
a sense in which nothing was real about Arthur.
She had a dread, which made her very wary, that one day Oswald would
seize upon her, that he would take her in his arms and kiss her. This
possibility accumulated. She had a feeling that it would be something
very dreadful, painful and enormous; that it would be like being
branded, that therewith Arthur would be abolished for her.... At the
thought she realized that she did not want Arthur to be abolished. She
had an enormous kindliness for Arthur that would have been impossible
without a little streak of humorous superiority. If Oswald threatened
her with his latent mastery, Arthur had the appeal of much dependence.
And apart from Oswald or Arthur, something else in her protested, an
instinct or a deeply-rooted tradition. The thought of a second man was
like thinking of the dislocation of her soul. It involved a nightmare of
overlapping, of partial obliteration, of contrast and replacement, in
things that she felt could have no honour or dignity unless they are as
simple and natural as inadvertent actions....
The thing that swayed her most towards Oswald, oddly enough, was his
mutilated face. That held her back from any decision against him. “If I
do not go with him,” she thought, “he will think it is that.” She could
not endure that he should be so wounded.
Then, least personal and selfish thought of all, was the question of
Joan and Peter. What would happen to them? In any case, Dolly knew they
would come to her. There was no bitter vindictiveness in Arthur, and he
shirked every responsibility he could. She could leave him and go to
Uganda and return to them. She knew there would be no attempt to deprive
her of Peter. Oswald would be as good a father as Arthur. The children
weighed on neither side.
Dolly’s mind had become discontinuous as it had never been discontinuous
before. None of these things were in her mind all the time; sometimes
one aspect was uppermost and sometimes another. Sometimes she was ruled
by nothing but vindictive pride which urged her to put herself on a
level with Arthur. At times again her pride was white and tight-lipped,
exhorting her above all things not to put herself on a level with
Arthur. When Oswald pressed her, her every impulse was to resist; when
he was away and she felt her loneliness—and his—her heart went out to
him.
She had given herself to Arthur, that seemed conclusive. But Arthur had
dishonoured the gift. She had a great sense of obligation to Oswald. She
had loved Oswald before she had ever seen Arthur; years ago she had
given her cousin the hope and claim that burnt accusingly in his eye
today.
“Come with me, Dolly,” he said. “Come with me. Share my life. This isn’t
life here.”
“But could I come with you?”
“If you dared. Not to Blantyre, perhaps. That’s—respectable. Church and
women and chatter. Blantyre’s over. But there’s Uganda. Baker took a
wife there. It’s still a land of wild romance. And I must go soon. I
must get to Uganda. So much is happening. Muir says this Soudanese
trouble won’t wait.... But I hang on here, day after day. I can’t leave
you to it, Dolly. I can’t endure that.”
“You _have_ to leave me,” she said.
“No. Come with me. This soft grey-green countryside is no place for you.
I want you in a royal leopard skin with a rifle in your hand. You are
pale for want of the sun. And while we were out there _he_ could divorce
you. He would divorce you—and marry some other copper puncher. Some
Craftswoman. And stencil like hell. Then we could marry.”
He gripped her wrists across the stone table. “Dolly, my darling!” he
said; “don’t let me go back alone.”
“But what of Peter and Joan?”
“Leave them to nurses for a year or so and then bring them out to the
sun. If the boy stays here, he will grow up—some sort of fiddling
artist. He will punch copper and play about with book-binding.”
She struggled suddenly to free her wrists, and he gripped them tighter
until he saw that she was looking towards the house. At last he realized
that Arthur approached.
“Oh, _damn_!” said Oswald....
§ 8
Dolly cut this knot she could not untie, and as soon as she had cut it
she began to repent.
Indecision may become an unendurable torment. On the one hand that dark
strong life in the African sunblaze with this man she feared in spite of
his unconcealed worship, called to a long-suppressed vein of courage in
her being; on the other hand was her sense of duty, her fastidious
cleanness, this English home with its thousand gentle associations and
Arthur, Arthur who had suddenly abandoned neglect, become attentive,
mutely apologetic, but who had said not a word, since he had put himself
out of court, about Oswald.
He had said nothing, but he had become grave in his manner. Once or
twice she had watched him when he had not known she watched him, and she
had tried to fathom what was now in his mind. Did he want her?
This and that pulled her.
One night in the middle of the night she lay awake, unable to sleep,
unable to decide. She went to her window and pressed her forehead
against the pane and stared at the garden in a mist of moonlight. “I
must end it,” she said. “I must end it.”
She went to the door that separated her room from Arthur’s, and unlocked
it noisily. She walked across the room and stood by the window. Arthur
was awake too. He leant up upon his elbow and regarded her without a
word.
“Arthur,” she said, “am I to go to Africa or am I to stay with you?”
Arthur answered after a little while. “I want you to stay with me.”
“On my conditions?”
“I have been a fool, Dolly. It’s over....”
They were both trembling, and their voices were unsteady.
“Can I believe you, Arthur?” she asked weakly....
He came across the moonlight to her, and as he spoke his tears came.
Old, tender, well-remembered phrases were on his lips. “Dolly! Little
sweet Dolly,” he said, and took her hungrily into his arms....
There remained nothing now of the knot but to tell Oswald that she had
made her irrevocable decision.
§ 9
Arthur was eloquent about their reconciliation. What became of her rival
Dolly never learnt, nor greatly cared; she was turned out of Arthur’s
heart, it would seem, rather as one turns a superfluous cat out of
doors. Arthur alluded to the emotional situation generally as “this
mess.” “If I’d had proper work to do and some outlet for my energy this
mess wouldn’t have happened,” he said. He announced in phrases only too
obviously derivative that he must find something _real_ to do.
“Something that will take me and use me.”
But Dolly was manifestly unhappy. He decided that the crisis had
overtaxed her. Oswald must have worried her tremendously. (He thought it
was splendid of her that she never blamed Oswald.) The garden, the
place, was full now of painful associations—and moreover the rejected
cat was well within the range of a chance meeting. Travel among
beautiful scenery seemed the remedy indicated. Their income happened to
be a little overspent, but it only added to his sense of rising to a
great emotional emergency that he should have to draw upon his capital.
They started upon a sort of recrudescence of their honeymoon, beginning
with Rome.
Aunt Phyllis and Aunt Phœbe came to mind the house and Joan and Peter.
Aunt Phœbe was writing a little wise poetical book about education,
mostly out of her inner consciousness, and she seized the opportunity of
this experience very gladly....
Dolly was a thing of moods for all that journey.
At times she was extravagantly hilarious, she was wild, as she had never
been before. She would start out to scamper about a twilit town after a
long day’s travel, so that it was hard for Arthur to keep pace with her
flitting energy; she would pretend to be Tarantula-bitten in some
chestnut grove and dance love dances and flee like a dryad to be pursued
and caught. And at other times she sat white and still as though she had
a broken heart. Never did an entirely virtuous decision give a woman so
much heartache. They went up Vesuvius by night on mules from Pompeii,
and as they stood on the black edge of the crater, the guide called her
attention to the vast steely extent of the moonlit southward sea.
She heard herself whisper “Africa,” and wondered if Arthur too had
heard.
And at Capri Arthur had a dispute with a boatman. The boat was taken at
the Marina Grande. The boatman proposed the tour of the island and all
the grottos, and from the Marina Grande the project seemed reasonable
enough. The sea, though not glassy smooth, was quite a practicable sea.
But a point had to be explained very carefully. The boatman put it in
slow and simple Italian with much helpful gesture. If the wind rose to a
storm so that they would have to return before completing this “giro,”
they would still pay the same fee.
“Oh quite,” said Arthur carelessly in English, and the bargain was made.
They worked round the corner of the island, under the Salto di Tiberio,
that towering cliff down which the legend says Tiberius flung his
victims, and as soon as they came out from under the lee of the island
Arthur discovered a cheat. The gathering wind beyond the shelter of the
cliffs was cutting up the blue water into a disorderly system of
tumbling white-capped waves. The boat headed straight into a storm. It
lifted and fell and swayed and staggered; the boatman at his oar
dramatically exaggerated his difficulties. “He knew of this,” said
Arthur savagely. “He thinks we shall want to give in. Well, let’s see
who gives in first. Let’s put him through his program and see how he
likes it.”
Arthur had taken off his hat, and clutched it to save it from the wind.
He looked very fine with his hair blowing back. “Buona aria,” he said,
grinning cheerfully to the boatman. “Bellissima!”
The boatman was understood to say that the wind was rising and that it
was going to be worse presently.
“Bellissima!” said Arthur, patting Dolly’s back.
The boatman was seized with solicitude for the lady.
Dolly surveyed the great cliffs that towered overhead and the frothy
crests against which the boat smacked and lifted. “Bellissima,” she
agreed, smiling at the boatman’s consternation. “Avanti!”
The boat plunged and ploughed its way for a little while in silence. The
boatman suggested that things were getting dangerous. Could the signora
swim?
Arthur assured him that she could swim like a fish.
And the capitano?
Arthur accepted his promotion cheerfully and assured the boatman that
his swimming was only second to Dolly’s.
The boatman informed them that he himself could scarcely swim at all. He
was not properly a seafaring man. He had come to Capri for his health;
his lungs were weak. He had been a stonemason at Alessandria, but the
dust had been bad for his lungs. He could not swim. He could not manage
a boat very well in stormy weather. And he was an orphan.
“_Io_ Orfano!” cried Arthur, greatly delighted, and stabbing himself
with an elucidatory forefinger. “Io Orfano anche.”
The boatman lapsed into gloom. In a little while they had beaten round
the headland into view of the Faraglione, that big outstanding rock
which is pierced by a great arch, upon the south-eastern side of the
island. The passage through this Arco Naturale was in the boatman’s
agreement. They could see the swirl of the waters now through that
natural gateway, rising, pouring almost to the top of the arch and then
swirling down to the trough of the wave. The west wind whipped the
orphan’s blue-black curls about his ears. He began to cry off his
bargain.
“We go through that arch,” said Arthur, “or my name is not Stubland.”
The boatman argued his case. The wind was rising; the further they went
the more they came into the weather. He had not the skill of a man born
to the sea.
“You made the bargain,” said Arthur.
“Let us return while we are still safe,” the boatman protested.
“Go through the arch,” said Arthur. The boatman looked at the arch, the
sky, the endless onslaught of advancing waves to seaward and Arthur, and
then with a gesture of despair turned the boat towards the arch.
“He’s frightened, Arthur,” said Dolly.
“Serve him right. He won’t try this game again in a hurry,” said Arthur,
and then relenting: “Go through the arch and we will return....”
The boatman baulked at the arch twice. It was evident they must go
through just behind the crest of a wave. He headed in just a moment or
so too soon, got through on the very crest, bent double to save his
head, made a clumsy lunge with his oar that struck the rock and threw
him sideways. Then they were rushing with incredible swiftness out of
the arch down a blue-green slope of water, and the Faraglione rose again
before Dolly’s eyes like a thing relieved after a moment of intense
concentration. But suddenly everything was sideways. Everything was
askew. The boat was half overturned and the boatman was sitting
unsteadily on the gunwale, clutching at the opposite side which was
rising, rising. The man, she realized, was going overboard, and Arthur’s
swift grab at him did but complete the capsize. The side of the boat was
below her where the floor should be, and that gave way to streaming
bubbling water into which one man plunged on the top of the other....
Dolly leapt clear of the overturned boat, went under and came up....
She tossed the wet hair from her head and looked about her. The
Faraglione was already thirty yards or more away and receding fast. The
boat was keel upward and rolling away towards the cliff. There were no
signs of Arthur or the boatman.
What must she do? Just before the accident she had noted the Piccola
Marina away to the north-west. That would mean a hard swim against the
waves, but it would be the best thing to do. It could not be half a mile
away. And Arthur? Arthur would look after himself. He would do that all
right. She would only encumber him by swimming around. Perhaps he would
get the man on to the boat. Perhaps people had seen them from the
Piccola Marina. If so boats would come out to them.
She struck out shoreward.
How light one’s clothes made one feel! But presently they would drag.
(Never meet trouble half-way.) It was going to be a long swim. Even if
there should be no current....
She swam....
Then she had doubts. Ought she to go back and look for Arthur? She could
not be much good to him even if she found him. It was her first duty to
save herself. Peter was not old enough to be left. No one would care for
Joan and him as she could care for them. It was a long enough swim
without looking for Arthur. It was going to be a very long swim....
She wished she could get a glimpse of Arthur. She looked this way and
that. It would be easier to swim side by side. But in this choppy sea he
might be quite close and still be hidden.... Best not to bother about
things—just swim.
For a long time she swam like a machine....
After a time she began to think of her clothes again. The waves now
seemed to be trying to get them off. She was being tugged back by her
clothes. Could she get some of them off? Not in this rough water. It
would be more exhausting than helpful. Clothes ought to be easier to get
off; not so much tying and pinning....
The waves were coming faster now. The wind must be freshening. They were
more numerous and less regular.
Splash! That last wave was a trencherous beast—no!—treacherous beast....
Phew, ugh! Salt in the mouth. Salt in the eyes. And here was another,
too soon!... Oh _fight_!
It was hard to see the Piccola Marina. Wait for the lift of the next
wave.... She was going too much to the left, ever so much too much to
the left....
One must exert oneself for Peter’s sake.
What was Arthur doing?
It seemed a long time now since she had got into the water, and the
shore was still a long way off. There was nobody there at all that she
could see.... Boats drawn high and dry. Plenty of boats. Extraordinary
people these Italians—they let stonemasons take charge of boats.
Extortionate stonemasons.... She was horribly tired. Not in good
fettle.... She looked at the Faraglione over her shoulder. It was still
disgustingly near and big. She had hardly swum a third of the way yet.
Or else there was a current. Better not think of currents. She had to
stick to it. Perhaps it was the worst third of the way she had done. But
what infinite joy and relief it would be just to stop swimming and
spread one’s arms and feet!
She had to stick to it for little Peter’s sake. For little Peter’s sake.
Peter too young to be left....
Arthur? Best not to think about Arthur just yet. It had been silly to
insist on the Arco Naturale....
What a burthen and bother dress was to a woman! What a leaden
burthen!...
She must not think. She must not think. She must swim like a machine.
Like a machine. One.... Two.... One.... Two.... Slow and even.
She fell asleep. For some moments she was fast asleep. She woke up with
the water rising over her head and struck out again.
There was a sound of many waters in her ears and an enormous indolence
in her limbs against which she struggled in vain. She did struggle, and
the thought that spurred her to struggle was still the thought of Peter.
“Peter is too young to be left yet,” sang like a refrain in her head as
she roused herself for her last fight with the water. Peter was too
young to be left yet. Peter, her little son. But the salt blinded her
now; she was altogether out of step with the slow and resolute rhythm of
the waves. They broke foaming upon her and beat upon her, and presently
turned her about and over like a leaf in an eddy.
CHAPTER THE FOURTH
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE UNIVERSE
§ 1
Peter could not remember a time when Joan was not in his world, and from
the beginning it seemed to him that the chief fact was Mary. “Nanny,”
you called her, or “Mare-_wi_,” or you simply howled and she came. She
was omnipresent; if she was not visible then she was just round the
corner, by night or day. Other figures were more intermittent, “Daddy,”
a large, loud, exciting, almost terrific thing; “Mummy,” who was soft
and made gentle noises but was, in comparison with Mary, rather a fool
about one’s bottle; “Pussy,” and then the transitory smiling
propitiatory human stuff that was difficult to remember and name
correctly. “Aunties,” “Mannies” and suchlike. But also there were
inanimate persons. There were the brass-headed sentinels about one’s cot
and the great brown round-headed newel post. His name was Bungo-Peter;
he was a king and knew everything, he watched the stairs, but you did
not tell people this because they would not understand. Also there was
the brass-eyed monster with the triple belly who was called
Chester-Drawers; he shammed dead and watched you, and in the night he
creaked about the room. And there was Gope the stove, imprisoned in the
fender with hell burning inside him, and there was Nobby. Nobby was the
protector of little boys against Chester-Drawers, stray bears, the Thing
on the Landing, spider scratchings and many such discomforts of nursery
life. Of course you could also draw a deep breath and yell for
“Mare-_wi_,” but she was apt not to understand one’s explanation and to
scold. It was better to hold tight to Nobby. And also Nobby was lovely
and went whack.
Moreover if you called “Mare-_wi_,” then when the lights came Joan would
sit up in her cot and stare sleepily while you were being scolded. She
would say that she _knew_ there weren’t such things. And you would be
filled with an indefinable sense of foolishness. Behind an impenetrable
veil of darkness with an intervening floor space acrawl with bears and
“burdlars” she could say such things with impunity. In the morning one
forgot. Joan in the daytime was a fairly amusing companion, except that
she sometimes tried to touch Nobby. Once Peter caught her playing with
Nobby and pretending that Nobby was a baby. One hand took Nobby by the
head, and the other took Joan by the hair. That was the time when Peter
had his first spanking, but Joan was careful not to touch Nobby again.
Generally Joan was passable. Of course she was an intrusion and in the
way, but if one wanted to march round and round shouting “Tara-ra-ra,
ra-ra, ra-ra, Tara _boom_ de ay,” banging something, a pan or a drum,
with Nobby, she could be trusted to join in very effectively. She was
good for noise-marches always, and they would not have been any fun
without her. She had the processional sense, and knew that her place was
second. She talked also in a sort of way, but it was not necessary to
listen. She could be managed. If, for example, she touched Peter’s
bricks he yelled in a soul-destroying way and went for her with a brick
in each hand. She was quick to take a hint of that sort.
It was Arthur’s theory that little children should not be solitary.
Mutual aid is the basis of social life, and from their earliest years
children must be accustomed to co-operation. They had to be trained for
the co-operative commonwealth as set forth in the writings of Prince
Kropotkin. Mary thought differently. So Arthur used to go in his
beautiful blue blouse and sit in the sunny nursery amidst the toys and
the children, inciting them to premature co-operations.
“Now Peter put a brick,” he used to say.
“Now Joan put a brick.”
“Now Dadda put a brick.”
Mary used to watch proceedings with a cynical and irritating expression.
“Peter’s tower,” Peter would propose.
“_Our_ tower,” Arthur used to say.
“Peter knock it over.”
“No. No one knock it over.”
“Peter put _two_ bricks.”
“Very well.”
“Dadda not put any more bricks. No. Peter finish it.”
“Na-ow!” from Joan in a voice like a little cat. “_Me_ finish it.”
Arthur wanted to preserve against this original sin of individualism. He
got quite cross at last imposing joyful and willing co-operation upon
two highly resistant minds.
Mary’s way was altogether different. She greatly appreciated the fact
that Dolly and Arthur had had the floor of the nursery covered with cork
carpet, and that Arthur at the suggestion of Aunt Phœbe had got a
blackboard and chalks in order to instil a free gesture in drawing from
the earliest years. With a piece of chalk Mary would draw a line across
the floor of the nursery, fairly dividing the warmth of the stove and
the light of the window.
“That’s your bit, Peter,” she would say, “and that’s your bit, Joan.
Them’s your share of bricks and them’s yours. Now don’t you think of
going outside your bit, either of you, whatever you do. Nohow. Nor touch
so much as a brick that isn’t yours.”
Whereupon both children would settle down to play with infinite
contentment.
Yet these individualists were not indifferent to each other. If Joan
wanted to draw on the blackboard with chalk, then always Peter wanted to
draw on the blackboard with chalk at the same time, and here again it
was necessary for Mary to mark a boundary between them; and if Peter
wanted to build with bricks then Joan did also. Each was uneasy if the
other was not in sight. And they would each do the same thing on
different sides of their chalk boundary, with a wary eye on the other’s
proceedings and with an endless stream of explanation of what they were
doing.
“Peter’s building a love-i-lay house.”
“Joan’s building, oh!—a lovelay-er house. Wiv a cross on it.”
“Why not build one lovely house for both of you?” said Arthur, still
with the Co-operative Commonwealth in mind.
Neither child considered that his proposal called for argument. It went
over their heads and vanished. They continued building individually as
before, but in silence lest Arthur should be tempted to intervene again.
§ 2
Joan was a dancer from the age of three.