are far better actors than grown-up people as a rule. They enter into
the spirit of the part more quickly.
I spent Christmas quietly at home, reading, overeating myself, writing
letters, dispatching Christmas cards, attending a vast number of church
services, visiting the cottagers, dancing in the village schoolroom,
and gossiping with my father and mother. On the 27th I came down to
Bath for the Christmas dances. That night, at the first one, I found
to my intense disappointment that Ruth was unable at the last minute
to come. That young ass Conyngham arrived just after me. I therefore
dashed into the vestibule as quickly as I could to see if Elspeth
Tetley was there. To my great joy she was, and alone, and (woman-like)
as different as possible in her behaviour from last year. She smiled
cordially as I bore down upon her.
"H'lo, Mr. Traherne; it's a long time since we last saw you in Bath."
"Yes, and the last time I saw you you cut me: you cut my dances, you
cut me in the street--you----"
"All right, don't get peevish: how many do you want to-night?"
"None, if you're going to cut them all."
"Come now, let's bury the hatchet; you'll have to hurry. I see half the
earth waiting to wring your neck because you won't say what dances you
want."
"Well, how many are booked?"
"I've only just come."
"Yes, but that means nothing."
"Well, tell me how many you want."
"As many as you can jolly well let me have."
"Here's my card, fill it up as you like."
"Do you really mean that?"
"I do: for goodness' sake hurry up. How many have you taken? Oh! stop,
stop, you can't have them all."
"Well, I've only taken eleven as yet."
"Eleven! we shall set the whole of Bath talking."
"Who cares?"
"Oh! it's all jolly fine for you, but what about me, the poor
defenceless maiden? Where's the little girl you usually dance with all
night?"
"Ruth? She's not coming."
"Oh, that's why---- You must go--here's Mr. Conyngham and all the gang."
"You'll really keep those eleven?"
"Wait and see. Yes, yes, of course I will. Go away!"
So I have got to know Elspeth after all. I never spent such a night
in my life. She beats every girl I have ever met in every possible
way--she's prettier, more talkative, more seductive, more lovable,
more--more everything. She wanted to know all about me and told me all
her life history: we fixed up all sorts of meetings and grew more and
more pleased with each other as the evening went on. She is the best
dancer I ever struck and likes my style of dancing better than the more
fantastic and modern methods of Conyngham, against whom she seems to
harbour a pretty active dislike, to my great astonishment. I wonder
what's happened. They were as thick as thieves all last year.
The next day I met her again for a few minutes. I tramped up and down
Milsom Street until I saw her. I took Ruth to the pantomime at Bristol
in the afternoon and to _Gypsy Love_ in Bath at night. Elspeth was also
there. Yesterday I went to the rink with Ruth and saw Elspeth again,
and this afternoon I managed to get away from all my crowd and have tea
with Elspeth at the rink: so ends the year 1912.
I seem to be getting fonder of the other sex and not to be quite so
nervous and hoydenish in their presence as I used to be a year ago.
Bath has educated me a good deal. I am much more the normal man of
society than I ever thought I was going to be.
_January 1, 1913_
Life has moved since yesterday. To-night was the Lansdown Cricket
Club Ball. I divided my programme equally between Ruth and Elspeth.
Elspeth was looking wonderful in a filmy sort of pink strawberry frock.
Everything went quite normally and gaily until number fifteen, after
which Elspeth and I found a sitting-out room in inky darkness. Suddenly
she leant over, my arms were about her neck, we kissed ... and now
I live in a different world. Even now I can't believe it. It seems
impossible that she should love me. Yet she has promised to marry me.
I never dreamt such luck could be mine. She seemed so far above me,
so obviously a match for the best of men and not for a poor drudge of
a schoolmaster. She says that for a whole year she has been thinking
about me and meant to marry me all along, only she was afraid I was
already engaged or about to be. We sat out all the rest of the dances.
I am living on air. I am much too cheerful and can't sleep at all. I
want to go out and shout my good fortune to the skies. What are we
going to live on I wonder? What will my people or hers say about it? I
only know that nothing will induce me to give her up. I seem to be a
quite different person from what I was this time yesterday. I know that
then I never thought that I should have the ghost of a chance of even
knowing Elspeth well, and now she is willing and anxious to live with
me for the rest of my life.
_January 23, 1913_
The day after I was engaged I took Elspeth up to London with the idea
of going to see the South Africans play footer at Richmond. When we got
to Paddington we decided to "do" two theatres instead, so we lunched in
the Haymarket and went to see _The Dancing Mistress_, which was rotten,
and _Doormats_ at night. We didn't get back till half-past three the
next morning.
It was on that day that I was formally introduced to her people, who
were most kind and asked me to stay, which invitation I naturally
accepted. So I moved my belongings up to the Crescent where they live,
and in two or three days I began to receive telegrams and letters by
the hundred congratulating me.
Every day we took the dogs for walks, played billiards or went out with
the beagles. Old General Tetley, Elspeth's father, is a dear, very kind
to me and quite willing to allow us to be engaged and even talked of
our being married in a year if I could get a better job than my present
one at Radchester. Mrs. Tetley gave us the run of the house and we were
left pretty well to our own devices. Elspeth's brothers and sisters
(she has two of each) all appeared to congratulate us at one time or
another: they are an extremely cheery family and I love them all. After
a week of bliss at the Tetley's I took Elspeth up to see my father and
mother, in order to let her see our part of the country. She took to
them at once as they did to her. The rest of the holidays passed like
lightning: so long as Elspeth was with me I was perfectly happy, doing
nothing at all but listening to her play and sing or talk--the thought
of having to separate, however, went near to driving me mad.
When the time came for me to return here, I simply could not face it.
That last morning we walked over the moor and talked about anything
to keep our minds off the afternoon and then at 1.48 I took her
south as far as Derby, where she caught the Bath express and left
me standing, absolutely lifeless, waiting for the train to take me
back to Scarborough and Radchester. The pain of parting is the most
excruciating agony that I have ever undergone in my life. I had often
imagined that it must be awful for lovers to have to part, but I had
no idea it meant all this. I wanted to throw myself under the train
rather than put any more miles between us. I tried to read: I had
bought every kind of interesting magazine: it was all no use. I tried
to talk to people in the train: they bored me to distraction. By the
time I got to Leeds I was joined by a crowd of boys whom normally
I am only too glad to see. I couldn't find a word to say to them.
"Elspeth--Elspeth--Elspeth"--the one word throbbed through my head the
whole way back. I kept on wondering what she was doing at each moment
of the journey. I started to pour out my soul on paper. I want to go on
writing to her all day. Nothing else interests me. I can't work. I take
no interest in anything. I can't possibly face a year of this cruel
agony. I'd far rather die.
_February 2, 1913_
I have tried in every sort of direction to find another job. I can't
possibly torture Elspeth by bringing her here even if I could afford to
keep her, which I can't. I answer advertisements of every kind. I think
I must have approached every Head Master in the kingdom.
One business firm wrote from the City and asked me to go down to see
their directors, and I did, but all they could offer me was a sort
of glorified commercial traveller's job, my income to be solely on
commission, which isn't good enough.
I saw _The Younger Generation_ while I was in London, which pleased
me a good deal, but London without Elspeth is as hopeless as anywhere
else. My pangs are just as acute. I'm working like the devil and
playing games every day, but at night I'm so homesick or rather so sick
with longing for Elspeth that I don't know what to do. If only I'd got
some long-suffering friend in whom to confide, but even Tony can't fill
her place!
_March 2, 1913_
I've applied for educational posts in Egypt, India, Bangkok, all over
the world. I've been collecting testimonials from my colleagues. I
suppose all testimonials are the same, but I'd no idea I was such a
wonderfully gifted teacher as all my Dons and Senior Colleagues make me
out to be. It's good of them to lie on my behalf like this when I've
behaved so rottenly to them. I was getting on well with my continued
bombardment at every door of employment and working like a nigger, when
suddenly I got a really bad bout of "flu": it left me a complete wreck.
I had to get up before I was really fit in order to go to interview the
Colonial Office about a job in Nigeria. I felt properly seedy, but I
kept the appointment, and then suddenly lost all control of myself. I
couldn't face the prospect of going back to Radchester, so I just took
a train for Bath, telegraphed to Elspeth and arrived. She was a good
deal surprised and upset. I was put straight to bed for ten days and
now I'm recovering from bronchitis. I never enjoyed a disease before,
but it was sheer Heaven to have Elspeth nursing me. I felt serenely
contented and didn't care what happened to me.
Of late I have been very carefully considering whether or not I ought
to be ordained. Periodically I get what seems to me a clear call.
Elspeth is against it. I don't quite know why.... She came to see me
off at Bristol when I was convalescent. Again the agony of parting was
almost unendurable. I clung to her like a small baby until the very
last moment, utterly regardless of the other passengers. All the way up
in the North Express I suffered horrors of nightmares. The hills and
towns looked for the first time in my life cold and hostile. It was all
I could do to keep myself from jumping out and taking the next train
back. I know Elspeth does not suffer quite so acutely as I do. I'm
glad. It's too terrible a strain on the nervous system.
_April 3, 1913_
It was all I could do to keep going to the end of this term, but I
managed it somehow. I've thrown myself into my work as never before:
when I am actually in form, teaching, or in the afternoons playing
games I am more or less sane, but I am perilously near madness when
the night draws on and the hours creep past and I am left alone with
nothing to console me but her photographs, her letters and my letters
to her. She is my whole aim and end of living: I've tried going to
theatres in Scarborough, I've tried to coach all the boys for the
sports, I've played "Rugger" and hockey with greater venom than ever
before, with the rather humorous result that I now have spoilt my upper
lip for ever. I got it cut all to pieces: it was very cleverly sewn up,
but I guess it's going to be awry for the rest of my life. I have had a
fearful, nightly fear of dying before I can taste the bliss of married
life. I wish I could rid myself of this fear: it's the same sort of
funk that makes me rush ahead with anything that I am writing, lest
I should die before it is finished: it's a most unreasoning, foolish
obsession, but one that I am totally unable to eradicate. I owe more
than I can ever repay to Maurice Hewlett. I have found it increasingly
hard to concentrate my attention on to any book or author since I
became engaged: now I've found "The Forest Lovers," "Mrs. Launcelot,"
"Half-Way House," and others of his novels, and I have been really
engrossed, and literally forgotten all about my gnawing agonies while
reading him.
Poor old "Parsnips" Askew has been sacked after thirty years' service,
for incompetence. I never in my life heard such a blackguardly action.
Many mean things have been done since I came here, taking evidence
against boys in confession before Confirmation, putting the blame
for wrong judgments on to shoulders less well able to bear them, for
example, but this beats all. Askew has devoted the best years of his
life to Radchester and in spite of being persistently ragged by every
boy in the place for two or three generations, he has certainly done a
tremendous amount of good in his own honest, simple way.
_April 8, 1913_
As soon as ever the term was over I rushed back to Bath to stay with
Elspeth. There was an Easter Dance the very first night. Elspeth and
I had every one of them together. It was like returning to Heaven
straight out of Hell. I had been holding myself in leash so severely
for the past few weeks that I was perilously near to a severe breakdown.
Elspeth and I went to all the point-to-point meetings together and I
recalled my envious longings of the year before. Now I am as content
and as happy as it is possible for man to be. There isn't a shadow
on the horizon. We wander about Bath arm-in-arm, have tea at Fortt's
_tête-à-tête_, go to the theatre together, shop, and in the evening
Elspeth and her mother make things for her "bottom drawer," while I
pretend to read or write.
_May 3, 1913_
I took Elspeth down to Ilfracombe for a fortnight in April in order to
introduce her to my grandfather and aunts. I have never known Devon
more glorious even in the spring. Just to take her to all my favourite
nooks and creeks and hear her eulogies on them is worth Heaven in
itself. She is almost as true a lover of the West Country as I am. We
motored to Clovelly and Hartland, we went on the sea a good deal; she
is a far better sailor than I am.
I keep on applying for every sort of likely vacancy that I hear of.
The thought of the long summer term frightens me. I can confide in my
people: they understand. They say, "Get married: you won't be happy
till you do--never mind about the money, that'll come."
The Tetleys, on the other hand, can't understand what they call my
foolish impetuosity. What's the hurry? say they. We are both very
young. Elspeth is devoted to her parents, and so we are at a deadlock.
After three months of being engaged I have tried to find out what are
the peculiar attractions of Elspeth. I can't write them down. I don't
know. She is amazingly shrewd and self-possessed: she very rarely shows
her hand; as an observer of human nature I've never come across any one
to parallel her--she never misses anything. She is a quite unusually
capable musician, a peerless dancer and intellectual--oh, I can't
catalogue her like this: all I know is that I love her so passionately
that life without her is inconceivable....
We have so far compromised that Elspeth and I are to be married in
August if I can get a job of £300 a year by then.
_May 20, 1913_
It was worse than ever coming back to Radchester this time. The long
holiday all alone with Elspeth makes life without her more unbearable
than ever. I don't suppose people in our position usually feel like
this. Most of the engaged couples whom I know are delightfully placid.
Men are quite glad to get away from their fiancées and have a "fling"
with their old acquaintances before the gates of the prison-house of
marriage finally close on them. I seem to have changed entirely since
I met her. I am now simply a bundle of nerves enduring agonies of
apprehension daily. I am afraid of everything, afraid lest she should
be ill, afraid lest she should find some one she likes better than me.
I have as yet really no claim on her.
I suppose a passion of this sort comes to most men never, to a few just
once and never leaves them. I haven't written a sensible word in an
article since that eventful night in January, which now seems twenty or
thirty years ago. Five minutes after I have left Elspeth I feel as if
I had been separated from her for months and were never likely to see
her again. I write the most pitiable, unmanly, mawkish letters to her:
she bears with me wonderfully. I wonder if it would have been better
for her if she married Conyngham. He has money and certainly would not
be in danger of going off his head unless he was constantly with her.
I had always been led to believe that the time of one's engagement was
full of ecstatic joys. I wish I found it so. All I crave is marriage
and never having to separate from Elspeth as long as I live. Every
day this term, instead of playing cricket, I wander for miles alone,
looking at all the cottages and bungalows along the shore to find a
cheap enough place for us to live in.
Even Tony, though he does his best, cannot soothe me in my present
paroxysms. It really is sheer cruelty to think of transplanting Elspeth
from a place like Bath, away from society and shops and friends and
games and amusements to a dead-alive hole like this, where she won't
meet more than two girls of her own station in life in the year. I just
spend my time in praying for the days to pass more quickly.
I had no idea that twenty-four hours could possibly take so long in the
passing. Nothing contents me. I really try to plunge into my work but I
have lost all interest for the moment, even in English. The only thing
that consoles me is the fact that we have fixed the sixth of August for
the wedding. I am like some Lower School fag: every day I cross off the
date from five or six calendars, which I keep to show that so many days
have gone, so many have still to go.
I have interviewed the Head Master about my staying and he wants me
even as a married man. He has gone so far as to ask Elspeth to come up
this term and stay with him.
Elspeth has all her time filled up making preparations for the wedding;
she doesn't seem to miss me as I do her, which is after all not
strange. I seem to be the girl in this affair and she the man. Every
day I suffer more and more. Now the boys have nearly all got measles
and I am picturing myself as getting them too just when she arrives. I
have every sort of foreboding and dread on me all day and all night. I
haven't slept since I came back this term. I wish I knew what was the
matter with me. Day after day I watch for the post, waiting for the
offer of some job to arrive. From the morning till the evening post
seems a lifetime--but in the end I have been rewarded for my vigilant
and arduous search. I have just heard from the Head Master of Marlton
that he would like to see me on Wednesday with a view to my taking a
post on his staff in September. I have written to Elspeth to meet me in
London and come the rest of the way with me. I also mean to bring her
back with me to Radchester: I can't stand the strain of this any longer.
_June 11, 1913_
I went to see Marlton and Elspeth joined me in London. It is as
about as different from Radchester as Heaven from Hell. It is about
the most beautiful old town I have ever seen. The country round is
densely wooded, with undulating hills of no very great height, but
extraordinarily picturesque. After leaving Lewes--it's in Sussex--one
seems to lose all touch with the hurry of modern life: only the slowest
of slow trains stops at Marlton. We were met at the old-world station,
at which no one seems ever to alight, by a courteous old butler,
who led us up past the castle and the kennels to the Priory, a huge
Gothic church most beautifully proportioned, with flying buttresses
on the north and south. The school is an adjunct of the Priory and is
exactly like an Oxford College: it has the same perfectly kept lawns,
the same remoteness from actuality, the same quaint old cloisters
and tiny courts and quadrangles. All the buildings are hoary with
age and ivy-covered. The Head Master's house is set right in the
middle of the school buildings: the boys live in more modern houses
scattered here and there about the town. The Head Master and his wife
were exceedingly pleasant both to Elspeth and myself. They showed us
over the buildings, which are indescribably beautiful; the boys are
all quieter and far more gentlemanly than the northerners and looked
attractive and friendly. We went down to the playing fields and watched
them at cricket. They have none of our absurd rules here: there are no
bounds and boys are given as much personal liberty as if they were at
home. It will be splendid to teach in such a place. Both Elspeth and I
were enchanted with it. After a titanic battle, I managed to get her to
agree to come back to Radchester to stay for a few days with the Head
Master of the Preparatory School, who has always been good to me. Poor
Elspeth! When she saw the bleak desolate plain of Radchester she nearly
wept. Thank God we are not going to live here. She stayed at the Prep.
for ten days and I spent every spare second with her. Every morning I
used to go down to fetch her and she used to come up the shore to meet
me, looking just lovely. She would sit and sew in my rooms all day so
that I could get to her at once after school and I abandoned all games
so that I could be with her. After ten days she could stay no longer at
the Prep. and the Head Master had not asked her for another month, so I
had to try all sorts of people to see if they would entertain her. No
one would! So she had to go home. I couldn't do without her: I thought
I should go mad.
One morning the doctor came round and told me that I ought to give
myself a rest, that my nerves were giving way, that he would fix up
leave for me--that I was simply to go away at once. So without saying
good-bye to any of my four-years' friends I packed a suit-case and left.
It seems impossible to believe, now that I am back in Bath with
Elspeth, that I can ever have suffered as I did: it is all like the
dim recollection of some horrible nightmare. I miss my boys, I miss my
form, I hate to think of another man usurping my rooms, my place in
chapel, taking my work--but the break is final. This morning I received
all my books, my pictures, my clothes, everything that I had collected
in my four years and Radchester and I part company for ever.
XIII
_July 9, 1913_
As soon as we got back to Bath I was sent to a doctor, who told me
that I was suffering from a very severe nervous breakdown, and that I
must do literally nothing till September but laze. So I have parted
from Radchester for ever. Once I was married he said I should probably
become normal again. Elspeth and I spent our days shopping and making
arrangements for the wedding. We went down to Marlton to find a
suitable house to live in and found one about a mile from the school,
right on the outskirts of the town, a semi-detached "villa," rather
like the house in Stratford-on-Avon in which Shakespeare was born: it
has a tiny stretch of garden and a superb view from the dining-room
and bedroom windows of the park and the wooded hills of the south away
towards the sea. £35 a year is the rent. We measured every nook of it
for carpets and stairs and hall furniture, and made an inventory of
everything that we should want. We spend many happy hours searching
through catalogues for all that we shall require in the house. I have
insured my life for £1000, so that Elspeth will not be left quite
penniless if I die suddenly. We play tennis a good deal and I read a
fair amount, but I haven't the heart to write very much. I don't quite
know why.
_July 30, 1913_
Elspeth and I have had one or two minor tiffs over matters of judgment.
She has a decided will of her own. It is going to take me a little time
to learn the much-needed lesson that marriages to be successful must be
largely a matter of give and take. We are both rather obstinate. I must
learn to give in to her more readily.
_August 30, 1913_