HEATHERMERE.
Sunday was the last day but one of October. They all met at Waterloo in
a horrid fog, and missed the nine-thirty because Cecil Le Moine was
late. He sauntered up at 9.45, tranquil and at ease, the MS. of his
newest play under his arm (he obviously thought to read it to them in
the course of the day--“which must be prevented,” Arnold remarked). So
they caught a leisured train at 9.53, and got out of it at a little
white station about 10.20, and the fog was left behind, and a pure blue
October sky arched over a golden and purple earth, and the air was like
iced wine, thin and cool and thrilling, and tasting of heather and
pinewoods. They went first to the village inn, on the edge of the woods,
where they had ordered breakfast for eight. Their main object at
breakfast was to ply Cecil with food, lest in a leisure moment he should
say, “What if I begin my new play to you while you eat?”
“Good taste and modesty,” Arnold remarked, à propos of nothing, “are so
very important. We have all achieved our little successes (if we prefer
to regard them in that light, rather than to take the consensus of the
unintelligent opinion of our less enlightened critics). Jane has some
very well-spoken of drawings even now on view in Grafton Street, and
doubtless many more in Pleasance Court. Have you brought them, or any of
them, with you, Jane? No? I thought as much. Eileen last night played a
violin to a crowded and breathless audience. Where is the violin to-day?
She has left it at home; she does not wish to force the fact of her
undoubted musical talent down our throats. Bridget has earned deserved
recognition as an entertainer of the great; she has a social _cachet_
that we may admire without emulation. Look at her now; her dress is
simplicity itself, and she deigns to play in a wood with the humble
poor. Even the pince-nez is in abeyance. Billy had a selection from his
works read aloud only last week to the élite of our metropolitan
poetry-lovers by a famous expert, who alluded in the most flattering
terms to his youthful promise. Has he his last volume in his
breast-pocket? I think not. Eddy has made a name in proficiency in
vigorous sports with youths; he has taught them to box and play
billiards; does he come armed with gloves and a cue? I have written an
essay of some merit that I have every hope will find itself in next
month’s _English Review_. I am sorry to disappoint you, but I have not
brought it with me. When the well-bred come out for a day of well-earned
recreation, they leave behind them the insignia of their several
professions. For the time being they are merely individuals, without
fame and without occupation, whose one object is to enjoy what is set
before them by the gods. Have some more bacon, Cecil.”
Cecil started. “Have you been talking, Arnold? I’m so sorry--I missed it
all. I expect it was good, wasn’t it?”
“No one is deceived,” Arnold said, severely. “Your ingenuous air, my
young friend, is overdone.”
Cecil was looking at him earnestly. Eileen said, “He’s wondering was it
you that reviewed ‘Squibs’ in _Poetry and Drama_, Arnold. He always
looks like that when he’s thinking about reviews.”
“The same phrases,” Cecil murmured--“(meant to be witty, you know)--that
Arnold used when commenting on ‘Squibs’ in private life to me. Either he
used them again afterwards, feeling proud of them, to the reviewer
(possibly Billy?) or the reviewer had just used them to him before he
met me, and he cribbed them, or.... But I won’t ask. I mustn’t know. I
prefer not to know. I will preserve our friendship intact.”
“What does the conceited child expect?” exclaimed Miss Hogan. “The
review said he was more alive than Barker, and wittier than Wilde. The
grossest flattery I ever read!”
“A bright piece,” Cecil remarked. “He said it was a bright piece. He
did, I tell you. _A bright piece._”
“Well, lots of the papers didn’t,” said Sally, consoling him. “The
_Daily Comment_ said it was long-winded, incoherent, and dull.”
“Thank you, Sally. That is certainly a cheering memory. To be found
bright by the _Daily Comment_ would indeed be the last stage of
degradation.... I wonder what idiocy they will find to say of my
next.... I wonder----”
“Have we all finished eating?” Arnold hastily intercepted. “Then let us
pay, and go out for a country stroll, to get an appetite for lunch,
which will very shortly be upon us.”
“My dear Arnold, one doesn’t stroll immediately after breakfast; how
crude you are. One smokes a cigarette first.”
“Well, catch us up when you’ve smoked it. We came out for a day in the
country, and we must have it. We’re going to walk several miles now
without a stop, to get warm.” Arnold was occasionally seized with a
fierce attack of energy, and would walk all through a day, or more
probably a night, to get rid of it, and return cured for the time being.
The sandy road led first through a wood that sang in a fresh wind. The
cool air was sweet with pines and bracken and damp earth. It was a
glorious morning of odours and joy, and the hilarity of the last days of
October, when the end seems near and the present poignantly gay, and
life a bright piece nearly played out. Arnold and Bridget Hogan walked
on together ahead, both talking at once, probably competing as to which
could get in most remarks in the shortest time. After them came Billy
Raymond and Cecil Le Moine, and with them Jane and Sally hand-in-hand.
Eddy found himself walking in the rear side by side with Eileen Le
Moine.
Eileen, who was capable, ignoring all polite conventions, of walking a
mile with a slight acquaintance without uttering a word, because she was
feeling lazy, or thinking of something interesting, or because her
companion bored her, was just now in a conversational mood. She rather
liked Eddy; also she saw in him an avenue for an idea she had in mind.
She told him so.
“You work in the Borough, don’t you? I wish you’d let me come and play
folk-music to your clubs sometimes. It’s a thing I’m rather keen
on--getting the old folk melodies into the streets, do you see, the way
errand boys will whistle them. Do you know Hugh Datcherd? He has musical
evenings in his Lea-side settlement; I go there a good deal. He has
morris dancing twice a week and folk-music once.”
Eddy had heard much of Hugh Datcherd’s Lea-side settlement. According to
St. Gregory’s, it was run on very regrettable lines. Hillier said, “They
teach rank atheism there.” However, it was something that they also
taught morris dancing and folk-music.
“It would be splendid if you’d come sometimes,” he said, gratefully.
“Just exactly what we should most like. We’ve had a little morris
dancing, of course--who hasn’t?--but none of the other thing.”
“Which evening will I come?” she asked. A direct young person; she liked
to settle things quickly.
Eddy, consulting his little book, said, “To-morrow, can you?”
She said, “No, I can’t; but I will,” having apparently a high-handed
method of dealing with previous engagements.
“It’s the C.L.B. club night,” said Eddy. “Hillier--one of the
curates--is taking it to-morrow, and I’m helping. I’ll speak to him, but
I’m sure it will be all right. It will be a delightful change from
billiards and boxing. Thanks so much.”
“And Mr. Datcherd may come with me, mayn’t he? He’s interested in other
people’s clubs. Do you read _Further_? And do you like his books?”
“Yes, rather,” Eddy comprehensively answered all three questions. All
the same he was smitten with a faint doubt as to Mr. Datcherd’s coming.
Probably Hillier’s answer to the three questions would have been
“Certainly not.” But after all, St. Gregory’s didn’t belong to Hillier
but to the vicar, and the vicar was a man of sense. And anyhow anyone
who saw Mrs. Le Moine must be glad to have a visit from her, and anyone
who heard her play must thank the gods for it.
“I do like his books,” Eddy amplified; “only they’re so awfully sad, and
so at odds with life.”
A faint shadow seemed to cloud her face.
“He _is_ awfully sad,” she said, after a moment. “And he is at odds
with life. He feels it hideous, and he minds. He spends all his time
trying and trying can he change it for people. And the more he tries and
fails, the more he minds.” She stopped abruptly, as if she had gone too
far in explaining Hugh Datcherd to him. Eddy had a knack of drawing
confidences; probably it was his look of intelligent sympathy and his
habit of listening.
He wondered for a moment whether Hugh Datcherd’s sadness was all
altruistic, or did he find his own life hideous too? From what Eddy had
heard of Lady Dorothy, his wife, that might easily be so, he thought,
for they didn’t sound compatible.
Instinctively, anyhow, he turned away his eyes from the queer, soft look
of brooding pity that momentarily shadowed Hugh Datcherd’s friend.
From in front, snatches of talk floated back to them through the clear,
thin air. Miss Hogan’s voice, with its slight stutter, seemed to be
concluding an interesting anecdote.
“And so they both committed suicide from the library window. And his
wife was paralysed from the waist up--is still, in fact. _Most_
unwholesome, it all was. And now it’s so on Charles Harker’s mind that
he writes novels about nothing else, poor creature. Very natural, if you
think what he went through. I hear he’s another just coming out now, on
the same.”
“He sent it to us,” said Arnold, “but Uncle Wilfred and I weren’t sure
it was proper. I am engaged in trying to broaden Uncle Wilfred’s mind.
Not that I want him to take Harker’s books, now or at any time.... You
know, I want Eddy in our business. We want a new reader, and it would be
so much better for his mind and moral nature than messing about as he’s
doing now.”
Cecil was saying to Billy and Jane, “He wants me to put Lesbia behind
the window-curtain, and make her overhear it all. Behind the
window-curtain, you know! He really does. Could you have suspected even
our Musgrave of being so banal, Billy? He’s not even Edwardian--he’s
late-Victorian....”
Arnold said over his shoulder, “Can’t somebody stop him? Do try, Jane.
He’s spoiling our day with his egotistic babbling. Bridget and I are
talking exclusively about others, their domestic tragedies, their
literary productions, and their unsuitable careers; never a word about
ourselves. I’m sure Eileen and Eddy are doing the same; and sandwiched
between us, Cecil flows on fluently about his private grievances and his
highly unsuitable plays. You’d think he might remember what day it is,
to say the least of it. I wonder how he was brought up, don’t you,
Bridget?”
“I don’t wonder; I know,” said Bridget. “His parents not only wrote for
the Yellow Book, but gave it him to read in the nursery, and it
corrupted him for life. He would, of course, faint if one suggested that
he carried the taint of anything so antiquated, but infant impressions
are hard to eradicate. I know of old that the only way to stop him is
to feed him, so let’s have lunch, however unsuitable the hour and the
place may be.”
Sally said, “Hurrah, let’s. In this sand-pit.” So they got into the
sand-pit and produced seven packets of food, which is to say that they
each produced one except Cecil, who had omitted to bring his, and
undemurringly accepted a little bit of everyone else’s. They then played
hide and seek, dumb crambo, and other vigorous games, because as Arnold
said, “A moment’s pause, and we are undone,” until for weariness the
pause came upon them, and then Cecil promptly seized the moment and
produced the play, and they had to listen. Arnold succumbed, vanquished,
and stretched himself on the heather.
“You have won; I give in. Only leave out the parts that are least
suitable for Sally to hear.”
So, like other days in the country, the day wore through, and they
caught the 5.10 back to Waterloo.
At supper that evening Eddy told the vicar about Mrs. Le Moine’s
proposal.
“So she’s coming to-morrow night, with Datcherd.”
Hillier looked up sharply.
“Datcherd! That man!” He caught himself up from a scornful epithet.
“Why not?” said the vicar tolerantly. “He’s very keen on social work,
you know.”
Peters and Hillier both looked cross.
“I know personally,” said Hillier, “of cases where his influence has
been ruinous.”
Peters said, “What does he want down here?”
Eddy said, “He won’t have much influence during one evening. I suppose
he wants to watch how they take the music, and, generally, to see what
our clubs are like. Besides, he and Mrs. Le Moine are great friends, and
she naturally likes to have someone to come with.”
“Datcherd’s a tremendously interesting person,” said Traherne. “I’ve met
him once or twice; I should like to see more of him.”
“A very able man,” said the vicar, and said grace.