|THERE were moments during that night when Sam imagined that he was in
the stranglehold of a grand passion: times when he quite successfully
deceived himself that he burned for Ada.
And certainly the experience, unique for him, of a sleepless night lent
colour to the belief that he was passionately in love, whereas he was,
in fact, merely attracted by a girl who had spared no pains to attract;
and what kept Sam awake was not passion but calculation. The affair,
indeed, was as broad as it was long: it had a slender basis of
mutual attraction, and a monstrous superstructure on each side of
self-interest.
He did not “see through” Ada to the point of being prophetic about her,
but he did even from the beginning perceive that Anne was not likely
to be enthusiastic. But would Anne greet any daughter-in-law with open
arms? Was there born the daughter of Eve whom Anne would think the peer
of her Sam? He did not want to cross his mother, but a man must be a
man, and a mother’s fondness and her jealousy of the intending wife were
things about which one had to be callous. The world, as Benedick said,
must be peopled.
Anne would see eye to eye with him as to the practical advantages of
Ada. Ada was Peter’s daughter.
That parentage had, by way of discount, the defect of its quality.
Socially it was a great thing to be Peter’s son-in-law, and not only
socially but ideally. Sam’s admiration for the curate was genuine
enough, and he knew that Anne shared it. But there was the question of
money, and Peter had none. Sam kept his mother, and would have to keep
his wife. He saw in Ada an asset which he could ultimately exploit, but,
in the meantime, until there came into his mind the scheme which should
turn his association with Peter into money, he must reckon on a tight
period. Anne would see the tight period, but not the unborn, fruitful
plan on which he counted for their future. And he could not hurry that
plan to birth. His schemes came to him when he least expected them,
spontaneously. They were not to be forced by worry.
Again, he reminded himself, there was no hurry. He had only just met
Ada, and was planning as if his engagement ring were on her finger. Not
that he had any serious doubts about that ring and Ada’s willingness to
wear it, but she did not wear it yet, and there was time in hand, and to
spare, for consideration of these practical affairs.
Meantime, he loved her, and love, according to the authors, was the most
wonderful thing in the world. He told himself very firmly that he loved
Ada, and that love was wonderful. Reiteration is so potent that before
morning he believed what he wished to believe. He recalled the soft
pressure of her hand when she said “Good night,” the froufrou of her
skirt, her melting eye; and persuaded himself that Ada Struggles was a
pearl beyond price.
He was perfectly sure that he loved her, and for proof there was his
sleeplessness. It occurred to him that as he could not sleep, and was
only thinking in circles, he might as well do something to hasten the
time when he could see Ada again. He could not return “Marcus Aurelius”
to Peter until he had read it, and if he returned it with unexpected
promptitude, he must be ready to face a stiff examination in it;
therefore he lit the gas and read “Marcus Aurelius” by way of serving
Ada, whom he loved.
Hard service, too, for there was not much in Sam’s philosophy which
agreed with the Emperor’s, but two nights later he was ringing Peter’s
bell with the book under his arm, an ordered précis of it in his mind,
and some selected passages from it on his tongue. They were not selected
because Sam liked them, but because he thought Peter liked them.
Peter was out, but Ada was in, and, curiously enough for one who was not
an optimist either by nature or experience, dressed again in her Sunday
clothes.
She opened the door to him. “Father is out, Mr. Branstone,” she said.
“I only called to return him this book.”
“I do not think he will be long,” said Ada promptly, who knew very well
that Peter would certainly be late. “Will you not come in and wait for
him?”
He came, crossing his Rubicon. The unchaperoned intimacy of that night
struck both of them as a daring short cut to a position to which they
were not entitled--a thing properly done only by the engaged and the
maturely and securely engaged. Luck fought for Ada.
“I’m afraid I can’t stay very long,” he hedged desperately.
Ada sat down and crossed her knees. A neat ankle was effectively on
exhibition. “That chair of father’s,” she said, “is fairly comfortable.”
Also, it faced Ada’s, and he drew up another, less inviting, chair, and
placed it flush with the fire. Except by a side-glance, he could not see
her ankle now, and evaded that aphrodisiac, while Peter’s chair,
though empty, completed the semi-circle, and seemed to give a sort of
countenance to their interview. Sam drew much comfort from that chair,
and tried to guide their conversation into literary paths of which the
chair would have approved. He discoursed of “Marcus Aurelius,” and he
was very dull, but felt virtuous.
Ada did not believe that it was virtuous to be dull, and mentally cursed
that _tertium quid_, the ghost of Peter Struggles, whom Sam had so
firmly established in his chair; but she saw that the pace was not to be
quickened here, under Peter’s roof.
“I think your knowledge of books is wonderful, Mr. Branstone,” she said,
when Sam had exhausted his ideas about “Marcus Aurelius.”
“I never find time to read, myself. Whenever I have the opportunity of
recreation, I go out for exercise.” The statement lacked the merit of
truth She never took exercise, but was adept at sitting in front of a
fire doing exactly nothing. The point was that in this house of the good
Peter, Sam’s enterprise was burked, and she wanted him where he could
race without a handicap. “Do you ever go to Heaton Park?” she asked
conversationally. “I shall probably be going there on Saturday.”
“With--with your father?” asked Sam.
“Oh, no,” she answered brightly. “Saturday is sermon day. That is why I
am in the way here, although,” she added pathetically, “I fear he often
finds me in the way. I am not bookish like you and him.” She gave that
explanation suddenly, and it satisfied him.
“I am not really bookish, either,” he said. “Of course you won’t be
going alone to Heaton Park.”
She hoped not. “I expect so,” she said.
Sam took the plunge. “Could I have the honour of accompanying you, Miss
Struggles?”
“Oh, but you are so busy. I must not waste your time.”
“It couldn’t be wasted with you,” said Sam, and glanced guiltily at
Peter’s chair, as if he had exceeded the limits of propriety, but he had
never seen Peter with anything but a benevolent smile, on his face, and
was unable to see him imaginatively now in any other mood. He took fresh
courage. “May I call for you?”
“That,” said Ada, “would never do. It would disturb father at his
sermon. I shall go by tram at about three o’clock.” She rose. There was
nothing to be done with Sam in that house, but she pinned her faith to
Heaton Park: and not in vain.
Allow for the difference in size, distance and the general scale of
things, and Heaton Park may be regarded as the Manchester equivalent to
Richmond Park.
Once upon a time the Manchester Town Council had a magnificent
opportunity, and lost it. There are legends that they did not mean to
lose it, and that they did not lose it through any fault of theirs. But
they lost it. They lost the chance of buying Trafford Park, which lies
along the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal, and was bought by Mr.
Ernest Terah Hooley. It is said that Trafford Park, now a flourishing
and rather American-look-ing industrial town (even the streets in its
residential area are numbered, and not named, after the American plan,
and railways stray about the roads, _more Americano_), is the one
successful enterprise associated with the name of Hooley. That may or
may not be true: at any rate the Manchester Town Council missed its
chance at Trafford Park, and when Heaton Park, another old estate, came
into the market, the Council did not repeat their mistake.
One goes, ascending all the way, through Cheetham Hill, the Ghetto, to
the heights of Crumpsall and the Park by a municipal tram, which
is admirably cheap or criminally cheap (according to one’s views on
municipal trams), and, in any case, magnificently efficient: and at the
end of the ride, one finds beauty. One may find tea at Heaton Hall, and
pictures that overflow from the meagre Art Gallery in Mosley Street, and
municipal golf-links, but one finds also beauty.
It is a rolling country, raised above the smoke, dotted with wood and
lake. Old gardens cling about the Hall, with rhododendron glades where
there are sculpture and pools, and the Park rolls free in open air that
is as clean as any air can be within five miles of Manchester Town Hall.
It, lacks of Paradise, and if one can see green hills from Heaton Park,
one cannot kelp but see the factory stacks that crown them or rise up
from the valleys, but beauty lingers here on the outskirts of an ugly
city secure against the jerry-builder and the ultimate defilement.
Ada was going to Heaton Park. Lovers have gone to Heaton Park before Ada
and they will go when Ada has crumbled to dust. Ada went, and Sam went
with her.
He went with her, not she with him: but if she led, he was very, very
far from admitting it, though it may have been his obscure, subconscious
knowledge of her leadership which made him outwardly assume the mien and
the gestures of a leader. He asserted, every inch of him, that he was
man, the conqueror, and she permitted the assertion and flattered it.
Leading, indeed, was not a habit of Ada’s, who was born to be led, but
it is given to all of us to outstrip our nature on occasion, and this
was Ada’s chance. A subtle skill was granted her that she might be
cunning with her opportunity. She was all calculation now, while Sam
forgot to calculate, and walked with Ada on his arm along the main drive
of Heaton Park.
Romance kept step with him and put a radiant veil between his sober
senses and this witching hour: through glamour he beheld his Ada, and
saw that she was good. He soared to high ambition, either to die or
to possess the nymph, and now, that heady hour, to put all to the test
amongst the rhododendron bushes behind the Hall.
There, by a patch of ancient turf, he halted her, and found a seat near
the pool where water-lilies thrive: a lovers’ nook, love haunted. Who
knows what ardours of the old régime, when lords and ladies trod that
turf, had passed upon the now decaying stone of that comely seat? What
ghostly lovers in satin and brocade stood round to bless them or to
mock? Wood pigeons cooed above them, calling the tune, and Sam danced to
it in an ecstasy of hot desire.
She had the sleek self-satisfaction of a cat, the same unhurried
certainty that the mouse was hers to gobble when she chose. Ada was very
happy.
But apprehension gripped him now. He had not known her for a week, and
she was Ada. Peter’s daughter. He stood aghast at his precipitance,
then, with the feeling that it was after all a “stroke” (though a larger
one than ever before), and that he believed in acting promptly, cleared
his throat and plunged into speech.
“Miss Struggles,” he said, “I know that I have only made your
acquaintance during the current week, but I seem to have known you all
my life. It’s because I used to see you in church, I daresay. I mean we
were not strangers when we met, and, anyhow,” he continued recklessly,
“I don’t care if we were. I’m not the hesitating sort. I mean, show me a
thing, and I can tell you right off whether it’s good or bad. My mind’s
made up in a jiffy: that’s the kind of fellow I am. And when my mind’s
made up, I act.”
Ada had given a little gasp at the phrasing of his opening--that “during
the current week,” an idiom from his business correspondence slipping
in here to mark his nervousness--but he was fairly launched now, and she
purred gently like a cat well lubricated with butter.
“Yes, Mr. Branstone,” she said, “I think men ought to be resolute.”
“So do I,” he replied. “And so I am. Quite resolute and quite determined
about you.”
“About me?” She turned innocent eyes wonderingly at him. “I didn’t know
you were being personal.”
“Well,” he said, “I am. I am,” he repeated, and took her hand.
“Mr. Branstone,” she murmured, as one who sees a vision splendid in a
dream, and let her hand lie limp in his.
He bent to her. “Can’t you,” he asked hoarsely, “can’t you call me Sam?”
She called him Sam, and he kissed her.
“Ada!” He spoke her name like a caress. “Ada!” Her name was wonderful;
she was a miracle; Sam was triumphant love. At that moment he was
passionately in love, and he had conquered. He had pressed the lips of
his divinity, shyly, with a revealing inexpertness which should have
charmed her, who, being a woman, knew all about love while Sam was in
short trousers. It didn’t charm Ada, it touched no deeper chord than
satisfaction at a good job well done. This was his first, his freshest
love, but she cared only that the fish was on her line, securely hooked.
He saw her face, idealized her face and gloried in her face: she saw a
wedding-ring, she was to be Mrs., she was to escape the book-ridden home
of Peter Struggles. Both had their moment then, but Sam, in his, loved
Ada, and Ada only loved herself.
“Darling,” he said, and sought her lips again She saw the thirst of
him--and used it.
She drew back. “I do not think you ought to kiss me again until we have
mentioned this to father,” said Ada Struggles, digging the hook more
deeply in her fish. “Not,” she went on, as she saw him flinch, “that I
do not want you to. Only----”
“Yes,” he said, as she left it at the “only,” and allowed him to
appreciate her infinite delicacy. “Yes. Of course. Shall we have tea at
the Hall?”
“Oh,” said Ada, “ought we to?” She was seen to tremble on the brink of
a delicious temptation, and with difficulty to resist. “I’m afraid,” she
decided, “not yet. But father will have finished his sermon by now, and
if you came and saw him at once, then... then, Sam...” She eyed
him, languishing, and opened up for him the golden vista of a jocund
courtship--once Peter had been “seen.” He came, obediently, to see
Peter, and she relaxed her standard so far as to take his arm down the
drive of Heaton Park. Indeed, just at the corner by the copse, where
they were hidden, he had an arm round her waist: his feet trod air, and
his head was with the stars.
Ada was thinking, “If he gets the engagement ring to-night, I can show
it after church to-morrow.”