resolutely.
“I know that this is your faith,” she said. “You told me all about it.
You’ve always told me about it.” Bobby’s quick ear detected a change in
her voice “Do you remember our first talk together? Do you remember our
talk in Lonsdale Mews? When we dined together at that Italian place?
That night. Just after we had found each other.”
Found each other?
“But I did not know then that your faith meant all the suppressions and
sacrifices and discretions it seems to do. I thought it was something
robust and bold. I did not understand its--qualifications. But since
then we have argued about these things and argued. That day at Kew
Gardens. That day when you took me for that walk over the downs to
Shere. We have threshed things out. Why should we argue again? I am
giving in--what can I do but give in?--and soon I will be a Sargonite
with you and Paul. But not this summer. Not now. This night--This
wonderful first night of summer. To-night I rebel against any
renunciation, any fobbing-off of individuals with second-best things.
I am going to be impossible and absurd. For the last time. I want the
world from the stars to the bottom of the sea for myself, for my own
hungry self. And all between. The precious things between. The love....
_There!_”
Vague questions appeared and vanished again on the screen of Bobby’s
mind. What had Christina Alberta renounced? What was she renouncing?
What was anyone renouncing? And had his ears cheated him, or had
Devizes called her, “my dear”? In front of Margaret Means and in face
of all the circumstances of the case it seemed to Bobby that Devizes
was the last person who ought to call Christina Alberta “my dear.”
And what was this about “fobbing-off”? Was this really a shameless
plainness of speech, an atrocious confession, or something that he
misunderstood?
Miss Lambone stirred uneasily.
It was as if an evil spirit possessed Christina Alberta. “Oh, _damn_
renunciation!” she said with bitter gusto.
They seemed to be sitting for some moments in a profound silence, and
then the nightingale became very audible.
§ 6
“I think,” said Miss Lambone in the silence, “that it is getting just a
_leetle_ chilly.”
“It is so beautiful here,” said Miss Means, who was warm in Miss
Lambone’s shawl. “Perfectly beautiful.
“How you can talk of frustration--!” she added, and left her sentence
incomplete.
“I think,” said Miss Lambone, “that I shall go in and light the
candles. It is too wonderful a night for the electric lights, far too
wonderful. We will just light the candles and the fire. And perhaps you
will play us something beautiful. These are such marvellous fire-places
here that they blaze up at once. I don’t know if you have noticed
them--a new sort. The fire is all on the hearth--no draught below, but
the shape of the back draws it up.
“I love a wood fire,” said Miss Lambone, and sighed and rose slowly and
voluminously.
§ 7
Two days later Bobby came into one of the little studies on the garden
side of Paul Lambone’s house. Paul had found out that Bobby wanted a
few days of uninterrupted thought in which to begin his novel, and had
asked him to stay on after the other guests had returned to London.
It was a perfect room for a writer of Bobby’s temperament; it had a
low writing-table close to the sill of the casemented window, and
on the sill was a silver bowl of forget-me-nots and white tulips. A
little glass-paned door released one into the garden without one’s
having to go back through the house. The writing-table had everything
a fastidious writer could desire, a pleasant paper-rack and wafers,
and real quill pens, and plenty of elbow room. The chair he sat in was
an arm-chair, immensely comfortable but not too luxurious; no hint
of repose in it but only a completely loyal support for a working
occupant. A garden path ran up hill from the window, a garden path
skirted by wonderful clusters of pansies. On either side of the pansies
were rose bushes, and though not a rosebud was showing, yet the fresh
green leaves, tinged with ruddy brown, were very exquisite in the
light.
He stood looking up the path for a time and then sat down and drew the
writing-pad towards him. He took one of those delightful quills, tested
the delicious flexibility of its points, dipped it in the ink and wrote
in his very neat and beautiful handwriting:
UPS AND DOWNS
_A Pedestrian Novel_
BY ROBERT ROOTHING
CHAPTER THE FIRST
WHICH INTRODUCES OUR HERO
He wrote this very readily because it was very familiar to him. From
first to last he had written it on fair fresh sheets of paper perhaps
half a dozen times.
Then he stopped short and sat quite still with his head on one side.
Then very neatly he corrected “which introduces” into “in which we
introduce.”
It was nearly two years now since he had first begun his novel in
this fashion, and he was still quite uncertain about the details
of his hero’s introduction. His original intention about the story
still floated pleasantly in the sky of his mind; a promise of a happy
succession of fine, various and delightful adventures, told easily
and good-humouredly; the fortunes of a kindly, unpretending, not too
brave but brave enough young man, on his way through the world, to live
happily afterwards with a delicious young woman. “Picaresque” was the
magic word. None of these adventures had as yet assumed a concrete form
in his mind. He felt they would come to him definitely enough one day.
If one sat and mused one half saw them, and that was assurance enough
for him. And so having rewritten his title page neatly and prettily, he
fell into a day-dream and was presently thinking round and about his
Christina Alberta as a good hero should.
Bobby was always being puzzled by Christina Alberta, always coming
upon something that seemed to clear up everything, and then being
puzzled again. But now it seemed to him that he really did know the
last fact of importance that was to be known about her. Overnight Paul
Lambone had described how he had taken her to Devizes to get advice,
and how they had blundered upon the reality of her parentage. He told
his story well as a story-writer should; he gave it dramatic point.
Evidently he told the tale of set intention, because it was time Bobby
knew. Lambone was aware of Christina Alberta’s engagement. He did not
know and nobody but Bobby knew that she never intended to be married.
But this, it seemed to Bobby, made the understanding of her situation
possible; explained that watchful tenderness of Devizes’ face suddenly
betrayed by the light of his inadvertent “my dear”; explained her
position as though she belonged to him and Paul Lambone instead of
being a rather unaccountable visitor; excused her vehement jealousy of
Margaret Means, because evidently she had become violently possessive
of her father, and had counted perhaps upon recognition and being very
much with him. No doubt Margaret Means stood in the way of that. It
was natural for Christina Alberta to want to be with Devizes and work
with him, and natural for her to suspect and anticipate and resent an
intervening personality. Apart from the magic of kinship it was natural
that two such subtle and abundant personalities should attract each
other greatly. That Devizes should have decided quite abruptly to marry
Margaret Means did not present any difficulties to Bobby; he was not
thinking very closely about Devizes. Margaret Means was pretty enough
for anyone to want to marry her. There are times, as Bobby knew, when
that sweet prettiness can stab one like an arrow. It had evidently
stabbed and won Devizes. And almost the only thing that gave Bobby
a second thought, but no more than a second thought, was Christina
Alberta’s fluctuation of purpose, why she should have consented to
marry him and then have changed her mind so quickly and definitely and
yet have retained him as a lover.
That resolution not to marry seemed after all just a part of her
immense modernity. Because of all this group of “new people” in which
he found her, she seemed to Bobby to be in every way the newest.
She was the boldest enterprise in living he had ever met. Her flare
of hungry rebel individuality fascinated him. Where in this world
was she going? Would she win out to this free personal life she
desired or would she fail to find an objective of work and come upon
disappointment and solitude like some creature that has strayed? The
world had terrified Bobby in his own person greatly; it terrified him
still more when he thought of this valiant little figure going out to
challenge it.
Bobby was naturally, inherently, afraid; his instinct was for security,
protection, kindliness and help. He clung to his “Aunt Suzannah” job
for safety. He didn’t believe Christina Alberta knew one tenth of the
dangers she ran of insult, defeat, humiliation, neglect, repulse,
fatigue and lonely distress. His imagination presented a tormenting
picture of her away there in dark, confused, immense and blundering
London, as an excessively fragile figure, light on its feet, shock-head
erect, arms akimbo, unaware of monstrous ambushed dangers. Now that
he began to understand her, he began to understand a great number of
bright-eyed, adventurous, difficult young women he had met in the last
few years, and he had his first dim realization of the meaning of the
deep wide stir among womankind that had won them votes and a score of
unprecedented freedoms.
Many of these younger women were doing their work and holding their
own exactly like men. They were painting and drawing like men, writing
criticism like men, writing plays and novels like men, leading
movements, doing scientific work, playing a part in politics. Like
men? On reflection--not exactly. No. They still kept different. But
they didn’t do their things in any fashion one could call womanly.
Without adding strange new meanings to “womanly.” The novels they were
writing interested him immensely. People like Stella Benson wrote
books like--anybody; you could not tell from her work whether she was
a man or a woman. All that again was new. George Eliot perhaps was a
precursor. Perhaps. The former sort of women’s writings, when they
were not “pretty me” books, were “kindly auntie” books; you heard the
petticoats swish in every page.
Sexless, these new ones? Bobby weighed the word. The earlier generation
of women who wanted to be emancipated suppressed sex, suppressed it so
fiercely that its negative presence became the dominant factor in their
lives. They ceased to be positive woman; they became fantastically
negative woman. But this newer multitude was not so much repressing as
forgetting their sex, making little of it. Christina Alberta had in
a way made nothing of her sex, not by struggling against it, but by
making it cheap for herself as a man makes it cheap for himself--so
that it was a thing of mere intermittent moods and impulses for
her--and she could go on to other things.
Going on to other things. His imagination recurred to that little
figure resolved to conquer the world for itself in defiance of every
tradition.
There was a strong urgency in him to start off to London in pursuit
of her, to hover about her, intervene, protect her and carry her off
to security. He knew she wouldn’t permit that sort of thing to happen
anyhow. He’d have to be just a friend and companion to her, be at hand
for her, and if she did encounter some disaster, stand by her.
It was a queer thing that he should want to stand by this unsexed
young woman. It was just what one would not expect; it was part,
perhaps, of the immense biological changes of the time. In the past
the species had needed half the race specialized for child-bearing and
child-rearing; now plainly it didn’t. The tremendous and worshipful
dignity of wife and mother was not for all women any longer. That would
remain for a certain sort of them to take up if they would. But a vast
multitude of women were born now to miss that. Some would become pretty
nuisances who would presently cease to be pretty, parasites on love and
the respect for motherhood; shams, simulacra. Others would break away
to a real individual life--a third sex. Perhaps in the new world there
would cease to be two sexes only; there would be recognized varieties
and subdivisions. So Bobby speculated. For just as there were women who
did not want to bear children, so there were men who did not want to
lord it over wife and children.
They would want to love all the same. Every individual of a social
species needed love; to fail in that need was to escape out of social
life to lonely futility. “Mutual comfort,” Bobby quoted. In his past
Bobby had dreamt of the love of children. Even now he remembered as
a fact that he had dreamt particularly of a little girl of his own
that he could protect and explore. But now the thought and interest of
Christina Alberta had blotted that out. It was extraordinary to him
to perceive how possessed he was by her. He could endure no prospect
of life just now unless it was to include Christina Alberta as its
principal fact. But he’d be no use to her unless she respected him.
He couldn’t hope to stand subordinate to her, any more than he could
hope to be her master. In the latter case she’d rebel; in the former,
she’d despise. They would have to stand side by side. And since she was
clever, able and resolved to work hard and distinguish herself, he must
word hard and also distinguish himself too. He had to be her equal and
remain and keep himself her equal....
That, in fact, was why he was going to write a great novel--not just a
novel but a great one.
He looked again at the neatly written page. “Ups and Downs,” he read.
“A Pedestrian Novel.”
It dawned upon him that there was something profoundly wrong about that.
It was to have been a story of wandering about in the world that is;
the story of the happy adventures of a well tempered mind in a well
understood scheme of things. But Bobby was beginning to realize that
there is not, and there never has been, a world that is; there is
only a world that has been and a world that is to be. “New people,”
whispered Bobby, and dipped a quill in the ink and made a border of
dots round his title. Then suddenly he crossed out those three words
“Ups and Downs” and wrote instead, “New Country.”
“That might be the title of any novel that matters,” said Bobby.
He mused deeply. Then he altered the sub-title to “The History of an
Explorer.”
He scratched out “Explorer.”
“Involuntary traveller,” said Bobby.
Finally he put back “A Pedestrian Novel” as his sub-title....
He became aware of an intermittent dull tapping, and following the
sound discovered a thrush trying to break up a snail on the gravel
path. But the gravel path was too fine and soft to give a firm anvil
for the beating. “The silly bird ought to find a brick or a potsherd,”
said Bobby and reflected. “I suppose all the flower-pots are shut up in
the shed....
“I don’t like to see that bird wasting the morning and being
disappointed....
“It wouldn’t take a minute....”
He got up, let himself out by the little glass door beside the window
and went to find a brick. Presently he returned with it.
But he did not go back into the study because while he had been
looking for the brick, he had seen a young blackbird which had got
under the strawberry netting, and was evidently scared out of its
silly wits. So he went back to see about the blackbird. The minutes
passed and he did not reappear. Perhaps he had found some other
fellow-creature in trouble.
Presently a little breeze blew into the study through the open glass
door, and lifted the sheet of paper which was to introduce our hero,
and wafted it softly and suggestively on to the unlit wood fire upon
the hearth. There it lay for a long time.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Superscripted characters are preceded by a carat character: n^{th}.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
No attempt has been made to regularize dialect.