France, and in Germany; a man with no nationality and no prejudices,
enormously old in experience, he found something very new and fresh
and entertaining about his fellow-students with their comic
public-school traditions and fabulous ignorance of the world. He had
quietly watched them doing their little antics, feeling all the time
that a row of bars separated them from himself, and that he ought,
after each particularly amusing trick, to offer them a bun or a
handful of pea-nuts. In the intervals of sight-seeing in this strange
and delightful Jardin des Plantes he read Greats, and it was through
Aristotle that he had come into contact with Alfred Petherton, fellow
and tutor of his college.
The name of Petherton is a respectable one in the academic world. You
will find it on the title-page of such meritorious, if not exactly
brilliant, books as _Plato's Predecessors_, _Three Scottish
Metaphysicians_, _Introduction to the Study of Ethics_, _Essays in
Neo-Idealism_. Some of his works are published in cheap editions as
text-books.
One of those curious inexplicable friendships that often link the most
unlikely people had sprung up between tutor and pupil, and had lasted
unbroken for upwards of twenty years. Petherton felt a fatherly
affection for the younger man, together with a father's pride, now
that Jacobsen was a man of world-wide reputation, in having, as he
supposed, spiritually begotten him. And now Jacobsen had travelled
three or four thousand miles across a world at war just to see the old
man. Petherton was profoundly touched.
* * * * *
"Did you see any submarines on the way over?" Marjorie asked, as she
and Jacobsen were strolling together in the garden after breakfast the
next day.
"I didn't notice any; but then I am very unobservant about these
things."
There was a pause. At last, "I suppose there is a great deal of
war-work being done in America now?" said Marjorie.
Jacobsen supposed so; and there floated across his mind a vision of
massed bands, of orators with megaphones, of patriotic sky-signs, of
streets made perilous by the organized highway robbery of Red Cross
collectors. He was too lazy to describe it all; besides, she wouldn't
see the point of it.
"I should like to be able to do some war-work," Marjorie explained
apologetically. "But I have to look after father, and there's the
housekeeping, so I really haven't the time."
Jacobsen thought he detected a formula for the benefit of strangers.
She evidently wanted to make things right about herself in people's
minds. Her remark about the housekeeping made Jacobsen think of the
late Mrs. Petherton, her mother; she had been a good-looking,
painfully sprightly woman with a hankering to shine in University
society at Oxford. One quickly learned that she was related to bishops
and country families; a hunter of ecclesiastical lions and a snob. He
felt glad she was dead.
"Won't it be awful when there's no war-work," he said. "People will
have nothing to do or think about when peace comes."
"I shall be glad. Housekeeping will be so much easier."
"True. There are consolations."
Marjorie looked at him suspiciously; she didn't like being laughed at.
What an undistinguished-looking little man he was! Short, stoutish,
with waxed brown moustaches and a forehead that incipient baldness had
made interminably high. He looked like the sort of man to whom one
says: "Thank you, I'll take it in notes with a pound's worth of
silver." There were pouches under his eyes and pouches under his chin,
and you could never guess from his expression what he was thinking
about. She was glad that she was taller than he and could look down on
him.
Mr. Petherton appeared from the house, his grey shawl over his
shoulders and the crackling expanse of the _Times_ between his hands.
"Good morrow," he cried.
To the Shakespearian heartiness of this greeting Marjorie returned her
most icily modern "Morning." Her father always said "Good morrow"
instead of "Good morning," and the fact irritated her with unfailing
regularity every day of her life.
"There's a most interesting account," said Mr. Petherton, "by a young
pilot of an air fight in to-day's paper," and as they walked up and
down the gravel path he read the article, which was a column and a
half in length.
Marjorie made no attempt to disguise her boredom, and occupied herself
by reading something on the other side of the page, craning her neck
round to see.
"Very interesting," said Jacobsen when it was finished.
Mr. Petherton had turned over and was now looking at the Court
Circular page.
"I see," he said, "there's someone called Beryl Camberley-Belcher
going to be married. Do you know if that's any relation of the Howard
Camberley-Belchers, Marjorie?"
"I've no idea who the Howard Camberley-Belchers are," Marjorie
answered rather sharply.
"Oh, I thought you did. Let me see. Howard Camberley-Belcher was at
college with me. And he had a brother called James--or was it
William?--and a sister who married one of the Riders, or at any rate
some relation of the Riders; for I know the Camberley-Belchers and the
Riders used to fit in somewhere. Dear me, I'm afraid my memory for
names is going."
Marjorie went indoors to prepare the day's domestic campaign with the
cook. When that was over she retired to her sitting-room and unlocked
her very private desk. She must write to Guy this morning. Marjorie
had known Guy Lambourne for years and years, almost as long as she
could remember. The Lambournes were old family friends of the
Pethertons: indeed they were, distantly, connections; they "fitted in
somewhere," as Mr. Petherton would say--somewhere, about a couple of
generations back. Marjorie was two years younger than Guy; they were
both only children; circumstances had naturally thrown them a great
deal together. Then Guy's father had died, and not long afterwards his
mother, and at the age of seventeen Guy had actually come to live with
the Pethertons, for the old man was his guardian. And now they were
engaged; had been, more or less, from the first year of the war.
Marjorie took pen, ink, and paper. "DEAR GUY," she began--("_We_
aren't sentimental," she had once remarked, with a mixture of contempt
and secret envy, to a friend who had confided that she and her fiancé
never began with anything less than Darling.)--"I am longing for
another of your letters. . . ." She went through the usual litany of
longing. "It was father's birthday yesterday; he is sixty-five. I
cannot bear to think that some day you and I will be as old as that.
Aunt Ellen sent him a Stilton cheese--a useful war-time present. How
boring housekeeping is. By dint of thinking about cheeses my mind is
rapidly turning into one--a Gruyère; where there isn't cheese there
are just holes, full of vacuum . . ."
She didn't really mind housekeeping so much. She took it for granted,
and did it just because it was there to be done. Guy, on the contrary,
never took anything for granted; she made these demonstrations for his
benefit.
"I read Keats's letters, as you suggested, and thought them _too_
beautiful . . ."
At the end of a page of rapture she paused and bit her pen. What was
there to say next? It seemed absurd one should have to write letters
about the books one had been reading. But there was nothing else to
write about; nothing ever happened. After all, what had happened in
her life? Her mother dying when she was sixteen; then the excitement
of Guy coming to live with them; then the war, but that hadn't meant
much to her; then Guy falling in love, and their getting engaged. That
was really all. She wished she could write about her feelings in an
accurate, complicated way, like people in novels; but when she came to
think about it, she didn't seem to have any feelings to describe.
She looked at Guy's last letter from France. "Sometimes," he had
written, "I am tortured by an intense physical desire for you. I can
think of nothing but your beauty, your young, strong body. I hate
that; I have to struggle to repress it. Do you forgive me?" It rather
thrilled her that he should feel like that about her: he had always
been so cold, so reserved, so much opposed to sentimentality--to the
kisses and endearments she would, perhaps, secretly have liked. But he
had seemed so right when he said, "We must love like rational beings,
with our minds, not with our hands and lips." All the same . . .
She dipped her pen in the ink and began to write again. "I know the
feelings you spoke of in your letter. Sometimes I long for you in the
same way. I dreamt the other night I was holding you in my arms, and
woke up hugging the pillow." She looked at what she had written. It
was too awful, too vulgar! She would have to scratch it out. But no,
she would leave it in spite of everything, just to see what he would
think about it. She finished the letter quickly, sealed and stamped
it, and rang for the maid to take it to the post. When the servant had
gone, she shut up her desk with a bang. Bang--the letter had gone,
irrevocably.
She picked up a large book lying on the table and began to read. It
was the first volume of the _Decline and Fall_. Guy had said she must
read Gibbon; she wouldn't be educated till she had read Gibbon. And so
yesterday she had gone to her father in his library to get the book.
"Gibbon," Mr. Petherton had said, "certainly, my dear. How delightful
it is to look at these grand old books again. One always finds
something new every time."
Marjorie gave him to understand that she had never read it. She felt
rather proud of her ignorance.
Mr. Petherton handed the first of eleven volumes to her. "A great
book," he murmured--"an essential book. It fills the gap between your
classical history and your mediæval stuff."
"Your" classical history, Marjorie repeated to herself, "your"
classical history indeed! Her father had an irritating way of taking
it for granted that she knew everything, that classical history was as
much hers as his. Only a day or two before he had turned to her at
luncheon with, "Do you remember, dear child, whether it was Pomponazzi
who denied the personal immortality of the soul, or else that queer
fellow, Laurentius Valla? It's gone out of my head for the moment."
Marjorie had quite lost her temper at the question--much to the
innocent bewilderment of her poor father.
She had set to work with energy on the Gibbon; her bookmarker
registered the fact that she had got through one hundred and
twenty-three pages yesterday. Marjorie started reading. After two
pages she stopped. She looked at the number of pages still remaining
to be read--and this was only the first volume. She felt like a wasp
sitting down to eat a vegetable marrow. Gibbon's bulk was not
perceptibly diminished by her first bite. It was too long. She shut
the book and went out for a walk. Passing the Whites' house, she saw
her friend, Beatrice White that was, sitting on the lawn with her two
babies. Beatrice hailed her, and she turned in.
"Pat a cake, pat a cake," she said. At the age of ten months, baby
John had already learnt the art of patting cakes. He slapped the
outstretched hand offered him, and his face, round and smooth and pink
like an enormous peach, beamed with pleasure.
"Isn't he a darling!" Marjorie exclaimed. "You know, I'm sure he's
grown since last I saw him, which was on Tuesday."
"He put on eleven ounces last week," Beatrice affirmed.
"How wonderful! His hair's coming on splendidly . . ."
* * * * *
It was Sunday the next day. Jacobsen appeared at breakfast in the
neatest of black suits. He looked, Marjorie thought, more than ever
like a cashier. She longed to tell him to hurry up or he'd miss the
8.53 for the second time this week and the manager would be annoyed.
Marjorie herself was, rather consciously, not in Sunday best.
"What is the name of the Vicar?" Jacobsen inquired, as he helped
himself to bacon.
"Trubshaw. Luke Trubshaw, I believe."
"Does he preach well?"
"He didn't when I used to hear him. But I don't often go to church
now, so I don't know what he's like these days."
"Why don't you go to church?" Jacobsen inquired, with a silkiness of
tone which veiled the crude outlines of his leading question.
Marjorie was painfully conscious of blushing. She was filled with rage
against Jacobsen. "Because," she said firmly, "I don't think it
necessary to give expression to my religious feelings by making a lot
of"--she hesitated a moment--"a lot of meaningless gestures with a
crowd of other people."
"You used to go," said Jacobsen.
"When I was a child and hadn't thought about these things."
Jacobsen was silent, and concealed a smile in his coffee-cup. Really,
he said to himself, there ought to be religious conscription for
women--and for most men, too. It was grotesque the way these people
thought they could stand by themselves--the fools, when there was the
infinite authority of organized religion to support their ridiculous
feebleness.
"Does Lambourne go to church?" he asked maliciously, and with an air
of perfect naïveté and good faith.
Marjorie coloured again, and a fresh wave of hatred surged up within
her. Even as she had said the words she had wondered whether Jacobsen
would notice that the phrase "meaningless gestures" didn't ring very
much like one of her own coinages. "Gesture"--that was one of Guy's
words, like "incredible," "exacerbate," "impinge," "sinister." Of
course all her present views about religion had come from Guy. She
looked Jacobsen straight in the face and replied:
"Yes, I think he goes to church pretty regularly. But I really don't
know: his religion has nothing to do with me."
Jacobsen was lost in delight and admiration.
Punctually at twenty minutes to eleven he set out for church. From
where she was sitting in the summer-house Marjorie watched him as he
crossed the garden, incredibly absurd and incongruous in his black
clothes among the blazing flowers and the young emerald of the trees.
Now he was hidden behind the sweet-briar hedge, all except the hard
black melon of his bowler hat, which she could see bobbing along
between the topmost sprays.
She went on with her letter to Guy. ". . . What a strange man Mr.
Jacobsen is. I suppose he is very clever, but I can't get very much
out of him. We had an argument about religion at breakfast this
morning; I rather scored off him. He has now gone off to church all by
himself;--I really couldn't face the prospect of going with him--I
hope he'll enjoy old Mr. Trubshaw's preaching!"
Jacobsen did enjoy Mr. Trubshaw's preaching enormously. He always made
a point, in whatever part of Christendom he happened to be, of
attending divine service. He had the greatest admiration of churches
as institutions. In their solidity and unchangeableness he saw one of
the few hopes for humanity. Further, he derived great pleasure from
comparing the Church as an institution--splendid, powerful,
eternal--with the childish imbecility of its representatives. How
delightful it was to sit in the herded congregation and listen to the
sincere outpourings of an intellect only a little less limited than
that of an Australian aboriginal! How restful to feel oneself a member
of a flock, guided by a good shepherd--himself a sheep! Then there was
the scientific interest (he went to church as student of anthropology,
as a Freudian psychologist) and the philosophic amusement of counting
the undistributed middles and tabulating historically the exploded
fallacies in the parson's discourse.
To-day Mr. Trubshaw preached a topical sermon about the Irish
situation. His was the gospel of the _Morning Post_, slightly tempered
by Christianity. It was our duty, he said, to pray for the Irish first
of all, and if that had no effect upon recruiting, why, then, we must
conscribe them as zealously as we had prayed before.
Jacobsen leaned back in his pew with a sigh of contentment. A
connoisseur, he recognized that this was the right stuff.
"Well," said Mr. Petherton over the Sunday beef at lunch, "how did you
like our dear Vicar?"
"He was splendid," said Jacobsen, with grave enthusiasm. "One of the
best sermons I've ever heard."
"Indeed? I shall really have to go and hear him again. It must be
nearly ten years since I listened to him."
"He's inimitable."
Marjorie looked at Jacobsen carefully. He seemed to be perfectly
serious. She was more than ever puzzled by the man.
The days went slipping by, hot blue days that passed like a flash
almost without one's noticing them, cold grey days, seeming
interminable and without number, and about which one spoke with a
sense of justified grievance, for the season was supposed to be
summer. There was fighting going on in France--terrific battles, to
judge from the headlines in the _Times_; but, after all, one day's
paper was very much like another's. Marjorie read them dutifully, but
didn't honestly take in very much; at least she forgot about things
very soon. She couldn't keep count with the battles of Ypres, and when
somebody told her that she ought to go and see the photographs of the
_Vindictive_, she smiled vaguely and said Yes, without remembering
precisely what the _Vindictive_ was--a ship, she supposed.
Guy was in France, to be sure, but he was an Intelligence Officer now,
so that she was hardly anxious about him at all. Clergymen used to say
that the war was bringing us all back to a sense of the fundamental
realities of life. She supposed it was true: Guy's enforced absences
were a pain to her, and the difficulties of housekeeping continually
increased and multiplied.
Mr. Petherton took a more intelligent interest in the war than did his
daughter. He prided himself on being able to see the thing as a whole,
on taking an historical, God's-eye view of it all. He talked about it
at meal-times, insisting that the world must be made safe for
democracy. Between meals he sat in the library working at his
monumental History of Morals. To his dinner-table disquisitions
Marjorie would listen more or less attentively, Jacobsen with an
unfailing, bright, intelligent politeness. Jacobsen himself rarely
volunteered a remark about the war; it was taken for granted that he
thought about it in the same way as all other right-thinking folk.
Between meals he worked in his room or discussed the morals of the
Italian Renaissance with his host. Marjorie could write to Guy that
nothing was happening, and that but for his absence and the weather
interfering so much with tennis, she would be perfectly happy.
Into the midst of this placidity there fell, delightful bolt from the
blue, the announcement that Guy was getting leave at the end of July.
"DARLING," Marjorie wrote, "I am so excited to think that you will be
with me in such a little--such a long, long time." Indeed, she was so
excited and delighted that she realized with a touch of remorse how
comparatively little she had thought of him when there seemed no
chance of seeing him, how dim a figure in absence he was. A week later
she heard that George White had arranged to get leave at the same time
so as to see Guy. She was glad; George was a charming boy, and Guy was
so fond of him. The Whites were their nearest neighbours, and ever
since Guy had come to live at Blaybury he had seen a great deal of
young George.
"We shall be a most festive party," said Mr. Petherton. "Roger will be
coming to us just at the same time as Guy."
"I'd quite forgotten Uncle Roger," said Marjorie. "Of course, his
holidays begin then, don't they?"
The Reverend Roger was Alfred Petherton's brother and a master at one
of our most glorious public schools. Marjorie hardly agreed with her
father in thinking that his presence would add anything to the
"festiveness" of the party. It was a pity he should be coming at this
particular moment. However, we all have our little cross to bear.
Mr. Petherton was feeling playful. "We must bring down," he said, "the
choicest Falernian, bottled when Gladstone was consul, for the
occasion. We must prepare wreaths and unguents and hire a flute player
and a couple of dancing girls . . ."
He spent the rest of the meal in quoting Horace, Catullus, the Greek
Anthology, Petronius, and Sidonius Apollinarius. Marjorie's knowledge
of the dead languages was decidedly limited. Her thoughts were
elsewhere, and it was only dimly and as it were through a mist that
she heard her father murmuring--whether merely to himself or with the
hope of eliciting an answer from somebody, she hardly knew--"Let me
see: how does that epigram go?--that one about the different kinds of
fish and the garlands of roses, by Meleager, or is it Poseidippus?
. . ."
II
GUY and Jacobsen were walking in the Dutch garden, an incongruous
couple. On Guy military servitude had left no outwardly visible mark;
out of uniform, he still looked like a tall, untidy undergraduate; he
stooped and drooped as much as ever; his hair was still bushy and, to
judge by the dim expression of his face, he had not yet learnt to
think imperially. His khaki always looked like a disguise, like the
most absurd fancy dress. Jacobsen trotted beside him, short, fattish,
very sleek, and correct. They talked in a desultory way about things
indifferent. Guy, anxious for a little intellectual exercise after so
many months of discipline, had been trying to inveigle his companion
into a philosophical discussion. Jacobsen consistently eluded his
efforts; he was too lazy to talk seriously; there was no profit that
he could see to be got out of this young man's opinions, and he had
not the faintest desire to make a disciple. He preferred, therefore,
to discuss the war and the weather. It irritated him that people
should want to trespass on the domain of thought--people who had no
right to live anywhere but on the vegetative plane of mere existence.
He wished they would simply be content to _be_ or _do_, not try, so
hopelessly, to think, when only one in a million can think with the
least profit to himself or anyone else.
Out of the corner of his eye he looked at the dark, sensitive face of
his companion; he ought to have gone into business at eighteen, was
Jacobsen's verdict. It was bad for him to think; he wasn't strong
enough.
A great sound of barking broke upon the calm of the garden. Looking
up, the two strollers saw George White running across the green turf
of the croquet lawn with a huge fawn-coloured dog bounding along at
his side.
"Morning," he shouted. He was hatless and out of breath. "I was taking
Bella for a run, and thought I'd look in and see how you all were."
"What a lovely dog!" Jacobsen exclaimed.
"An old English mastiff our--one aboriginal dog. She has a pedigree
going straight back to Edward the Confessor."
Jacobsen began a lively conversation with George on the virtues and
shortcomings of dogs. Bella smelt his calves and then lifted up her
gentle black eyes to look at him. She seemed satisfied.
He looked at them for a little; they were too much absorbed in their
doggy conversation to pay attention to him. He made a gesture as
though he had suddenly remembered something, gave a little grunt, and
with a very preoccupied expression on his face turned to go towards
the house. His elaborate piece of by-play escaped the notice of the
intended spectators; Guy saw that it had, and felt more miserable and
angry and jealous than ever. They would think he had slunk off because
he wasn't wanted--which was quite true--instead of believing that he
had something very important to do, which was what he had intended
they should believe.
A cloud of self-doubt settled upon him. Was his mind, after all,
worthless, and the little things he had written--rubbish, not
potential genius as he had hoped? Jacobsen was right in preferring
George's company. George was perfect, physically, a splendid creature;
what could he himself claim?
"I'm second-rate," he thought--"second-rate, physically, morally,
mentally. Jacobsen is quite right."
The best he could hope to be was a pedestrian literary man with quiet
tastes.
NO, no, no! He clenched his hands and, as though to register his
resolve before the universe, he said, aloud:
"I will do it; I will be first-rate, I will."
He was covered with confusion on seeing a gardener pop up, surprised
from behind a bank of rose-bushes. Talking to himself--the man must
have thought him mad!
He hurried on across the lawn, entered the house, and ran upstairs to
his room. There was not a second to lose; he must begin at once. He
would write something--something that would last, solid, hard,
shining. . . .
"Damn them all! I will do it, I can . . ."