_August 30th._
In the old days before the war this house was nearly always full of
friends, guests, for they were invited, but they never were in or on my
mind as guests, and I don't remember ever feeling that I was a hostess.
The impression I now have of them is that they were all very young. But
of course they weren't; some were quite as old as Mrs. Barnes, and once
or twice came people even older. They all, however, had this in common,
that whatever their age was when they arrived, by the time they left
they were not more than twenty.
I can't explain this. It couldn't only have been the air, invigorating
and inspiriting though it is, because my present guests are still
exactly the same age as the first day. That is, Mrs. Barnes is. Dolly is
of no age--she never was and never will be forty; but Mrs. Barnes is
just as firmly fifty as she was a fortnight ago, and it only used to
take those other guests a week to shed every one of their years except
the first twenty.
Is it this static, rock-like quality in Mrs. Barnes that makes her
remain so unchangeably a guest, that makes her unable to develope into a
friend? Why must I, because she insists on remaining a guest, be kept so
firmly in my proper place as hostess? I want to be friends. I feel as
full of friendliness as a brimming cup. Why am I not let spill some of
it? I should love to be friends with Dolly, and I would like very much
to be friends with Mrs. Barnes. Not that I think she and I would ever be
intimate in the way I am sure Dolly and I would be after ten minutes
together alone, but we might develope a mutually indulgent affection. I
would respect her prejudices, and she would forgive me that I have so
few, and perhaps find it interesting to help me to increase them.
But the anxious care with which Mrs. Barnes studies to be her idea of a
perfect guest forces me to a corresponding anxious care to be her idea
of a perfect hostess. I find it wearing. There is no easy friendliness
for us, no careless talk, no happy go-as-you-please and naturalness. And
ought a guest to be so constantly grateful? Her gratitude is almost a
reproach. It makes me ashamed of myself; as if I were a plutocrat, a
profiteer, a bloated possessor of more than my share, a bestower of
favours--of all odious things to be! Now I perceive that I never have
had guests before, but only friends. For the first time I am really
entertaining; or rather, owing to the something in Mrs. Barnes that
induces in me a strange submissiveness, a strange acceptance of her
ordering of our days, I am for the first time, not only in my own house,
but in any house that I can remember where I have stayed, being
entertained.
What is it about Mrs. Barnes that makes Dolly and me sit so quiet and
good? I needn't ask: I know. It is because she is single-minded,
unselfish, genuinely and deeply anxious for everybody's happiness and
welfare, and it is impossible to hurt such goodness. Accordingly we are
bound hand and foot to her wishes, exactly as if she were a tyrant.
Dolly of course must be bound by a thousand reasons for gratitude.
Hasn't Mrs. Barnes given up everything for her? Hasn't she given up
home, and livelihood, and country and friends to come and be with her?
It is she who magnanimously bears the chief burden of Dolly's marriage.
Without having had any of the joys of Siegfried--I can't think Dolly
would mutter a name in her sleep that wasn't her husband's--she has
spent these years of war cheerfully accepting the results of him,
devoting herself to the forlorn and stranded German widow, spending her
life, and what substance she has, in keeping her company in the dreary
pensions of a neutral country, unable either to take her home to England
or to leave her where she is by herself.
Such love and self-sacrifice is a very binding thing. If these
conjectures of mine are right, Dolly is indeed bound to Mrs. Barnes,
and not to do everything she wished would be impossible. Naturally she
wears those petticoats, and those long, respectable black clothes: they
are Mrs. Barnes's idea of how a widow should be dressed. Naturally she
goes for excursions in the mountains with an umbrella: it is to Mrs.
Barnes both more prudent and more seemly than a stick. In the smallest
details of her life Dolly's gratitude must penetrate and be expressed.
Yes; I think I understand her situation. The good do bind one very
heavily in chains.
To an infinitely less degree Mrs. Barnes's goodness has put chains on me
too. I have to walk very carefully and delicately among her feelings. I
could never forgive myself if I were to hurt anyone kind, and if the
kind person is cast in an entirely different mould from oneself, has
different ideas, different tastes, a different or no sense of fun, why
then God help one,--one is ruled by a rod of iron.
Just the procession each morning after breakfast to the chairs and
Merivale is the measure of Dolly's and my subjection. First goes Dolly
with the book, then comes Mrs. Barnes with her knitting, and then comes
me, casting my eyes about for a plausible excuse for deliverance and
finding none that wouldn't hurt. If I lag, Mrs. Barnes looks uneasily at
me with her, 'Am I driving you off your own terrace?' look; and once
when I lingered indoors on the pretext of housekeeping she came after
me, anxiety on her face, and begged me to allow her to help me, for it
is she and Dolly, she explained, who of course cause the extra
housekeeping, and it distressed her to think that owing to my goodness
in permitting them to be here I should be deprived of the leisure I
would otherwise be enjoying.
'In your lovely Swiss home,' she said, her face puckered with
earnestness. 'On your summer holiday. After travelling all this distance
for the purpose.'
'Dear Mrs. Barnes--' I murmured, ashamed; and assured her it was only an
order I had to give, and that I was coming out immediately to the
reading aloud.
_August 31st._
This morning I made a great effort to be simple.
Of course I will do everything in my power to make Mrs. Barnes
happy,--I'll sit, walk, be read to, keep away from Dolly, arrange life
for the little time she is here in the way that gives her mind most
peace; but why mayn't I at the same time be natural? It is so natural to
me to be natural. I feel so uncomfortable, I get such a choked sensation
of not enough air, if I can't say what I want to say. Abstinence from
naturalness is easily managed if it isn't to last long; every
gracefulness is possible for a little while. But shut up for weeks
together in the close companionship of two other people in an isolated
house on a mountain one must, sooner or later, be natural or one will,
sooner or later, die.
So this morning I went down to breakfast determined to be it. More than
usually deep sleep had made me wake up with a feeling of more than usual
enterprise. I dressed quickly, strengthening my determination by many
good arguments, and then stood at the window waiting for the bell to
ring.
At the first tinkle of the bell I hurry downstairs, because if I am a
minute late, as I have been once or twice, I find my egg wrapped up in
my table napkin, the coffee and hot milk swathed in a white woollen
shawl Mrs. Barnes carries about with her, a plate over the butter in
case there should be dust, a plate over the honey in case there should
be flies, and Mrs. Barnes and Dolly, carefully detached from the least
appearance of reproach or waiting, at the other end of the terrace being
tactfully interested in the view.
This has made me be very punctual. The bell tinkles, and I appear. I
don't appear before it tinkles, because of the peculiar preciousness of
all the moments I can legitimately spend in my bedroom; but, if I were
to, I would find Mrs. Barnes and Dolly already there.
I don't know when they go down, but they are always there; and always I
am greeted with the politest solicitude from Mrs. Barnes as to how I
slept. This of course draws forth a corresponding solicitude from me as
to how Mrs. Barnes slept; and the first part of breakfast is spent in
answers to these inquiries, and in the eulogies to which Mrs. Barnes
then proceeds of the bed, and the pure air, that make the
satisfactoriness of her answers possible.
From this she goes on to tell me how grateful she and Dolly are for my
goodness. She tells me this every morning. It is like a kind of daily
morning prayer. At first I was overcome, and, not knowing how to ward
off such repeated blows of thankfulness, stumbled about awkwardly among
protests and assurances. Now I receive them in silence, copying the
example of the heavenly authorities; but, more visibly embarrassed than
they, I sheepishly smile.
After the praises of my goodness come those of the goodness of the
coffee and the butter, though this isn't any real relief to me, because
their goodness is so much tangled up in mine. I am the Author of the
coffee and the butter; without me they wouldn't be there at all.
Dolly, while this is going on, says nothing but just eats her breakfast.
I think she might help me out a little, seeing that it happens every
morning and that she must have noticed my store of deprecations is
exhausted.
This morning, having made up my mind to be natural, I asked her straight
out why she didn't talk.
She was in the middle of her egg, and Mrs. Barnes was in the middle of
praising the great goodness of the eggs, and therefore, inextricably, of
my great goodness, so that there was no real knowing where the eggs left
off and I began; and taking the opportunity offered by a pause of
coffee-drinking on Mrs. Barnes's part, I said to Dolly, 'Why do you not
talk at breakfast?'
'Talk?' repeated Dolly, looking up at me with a smile.
'Yes. Say things. How are we ever to be friends if we don't say things?
Don't you want to be friends, Dolly?'
'Of course,' said Dolly, smiling.
Mrs. Barnes put her cup down hastily. 'But are we not--' she began, as I
knew she would.
'_Real_ friends,' I interrupted. 'Why not,' I said, 'let us have a
holiday from Merivale to-day, and just sit together and talk. Say
things,' I went on, still determined to be natural, yet already a little
nervous. '_Real_ things.'
'But has the reading--is there any other book you would pref--do you not
care about Merivale?' asked Mrs. Barnes, in deep concern.
'Oh yes,' I assured her, leaving off being natural for a moment in order
to be polite, 'I like him very much indeed. I only thought--I do
think--it would be pleasant for once to have a change. Pleasant just to
sit and talk. Sit in the shade and--oh well, _say_ things.'
'Yes,' said Dolly. 'I'd love to.'
'We might tell each other stories, like the people in the _Earthly
Paradise_. But real stories. Out of our lives.'
'Yes,' said Dolly again. 'Yes. I'd love to.'
'We shall be very glad, I am sure,' said Mrs. Barnes politely, 'to
listen to any stories you may like to tell us.'
'Ah, but you must tell some too--we must play fair.'
'I'd love to,' said Dolly again, her dimple flickering.
'Surely we--in any case Dolly and I--are too old to play at anything,'
said Mrs. Barnes with dignity.
'Not really. You'll like it once you've begun. And anyhow I can't play
by myself, can I,' I said, still trying to be gay and simple. 'You
wouldn't want me to be lonely, would you.'
But I was faltering. Mrs. Barnes's eye was on me. Impossible to go on
being gay and simple beneath that eye.
I faltered more and more. 'Sometimes I think,' I said, almost timidly,
'that we're wasting time.'
'Oh no, do you really?' exclaimed Mrs. Barnes anxiously. 'Do you not
consider Merivale--' (here if I had been a man I would have said damn
Merivale and felt better)--'very instructive? Surely to read a good
history can never be wasting time? And he is not heavy. Surely you do
not find him heavy? His information is always imparted picturesquely,
remarkably so. And though one may be too old for games one is
fortunately never too old for instruction.'
'I don't _feel_ too old for games,' said Dolly.
'Feeling has nothing to do with reality,' said Mrs. Barnes sternly,
turning on her.
'I only thought,' I said, 'that to-day we might talk together instead of
reading. Just for once--just for a change. If you don't like the idea of
telling stories out of our lives let us just talk. Tell each other what
we think of things--of the big things like--well, like love and death
for instance. Things,' I reassured her, 'that don't really touch us at
this moment.'
'I do not care to talk about love and death,' said Mrs. Barnes frostily.
'But why?'
'They are most unsettling.'
'But why? We would only be speculating--'
She held up her hand. 'I have a horror of the word. All speculation is
abhorrent to me. My brother-in-law said to me, Never speculate.'
'But didn't he mean in the business sense?'
'He meant it, I am certain, in every sense. Physically and morally.'
'Well then, don't let us speculate. Let us talk about experiences. We've
all had them. I am sure it would be as instructive as Merivale, and we
might perhaps--perhaps we might even laugh a little. Don't you think it
would be pleasant to--to laugh a little?'
'I'd love to,' said Dolly, her eyes shining.
'Suppose, instead of being women, we were three men--'
Mrs. Barnes, who had been stiffening for some minutes, drew herself up
at this.
'I am afraid I cannot possibly suppose that,' she said.
'Well, but suppose we _were_--'
'I do not wish to suppose it,' said Mrs. Barnes.
'Well, then, suppose it wasn't us at all, but three men here, spending
their summer holidays together can't you imagine how they would talk?'
'I can only imagine it if they were nice men,' said Mrs. Barnes, 'and
even so but dimly.'
'Yes. Of course. Well, let us talk together this morning as if we were
nice men,--about anything and everything. I can't _think_,' I finished
plaintively, 'why we shouldn't talk about anything and everything.'
Dolly looked at me with dancing eyes.
Mrs. Barnes sat very straight. She was engaged in twisting the
honey-spoon round and round so as to catch its last trickling neatly.
Her eyes were fixed on this, and if there was a rebuke in them it was
hidden from me.
'You must forgive me,' she said, carefully winding up the last thread of
honey, 'but as I am not a nice man I fear I cannot join in. Nor, of
course, can Dolly, for the same reason. But I need not say,' she added
earnestly, 'that there is not the slightest reason why you, on your own
terrace, shouldn't, if you wish, imagine yourself to be a nice--'
'Oh no,' I broke in, giving up. 'Oh no, no. I think perhaps you are
right. I do think perhaps it is best to go on with Merivale.'
We finished breakfast with the usual courtesies.