THE VIEW FROM A HOUSE
Winnie shut Dr. Westermarck on _The Origin and Development of the Moral
Ideas_ with a bang. "I'm not going to do any more at the Synopsis
to-day," she announced. "It's much too fine. And what are you chuckling
at, Stephen?"
With the help of Liddell and Scott, and a crib, Stephen was digesting
Aristophanes' skit on Socrates. "An awful old Tory, but it's dashed good
stuff. On no account work if you don't want to, Winnie. This job's not
to be done in a day, you know."
It certainly was not--and least of all in one of his working days, in
which the labour of research was constantly checked by the incursion of
distantly related argument. Winnie could not make out how far he was in
earnest about the Synopsis. Sometimes he would talk about its
completion--and the consequent amelioration of society--in sanguine
words, yet with a twinkle in his eye; at other moments he would declare
in an apparent despair that it was properly the work of fifty men, and
forthwith abandon for the day a labour impossibly Herculean. Tora
maintained towards the great undertaking an attitude of serene scorn;
she did not see the use of delving into dark ages in search of the light
which only now, at last, was glimmering on the horizon of the future.
Alice, however, was all for the Synopsis; it was to make her father
famous, and itself became famous among her school-mates these many
years before there was the least chance of its coming to birth. "To find
out all that anyone ever said since the world began, and tell us whether
it's true or not," was Alice's handsome description of the proposed
work; no wonder the school-mates were impressed.
Though the 'awful old Tory' might well have seen in Shaylor's Patch a
lesser Phrontisterion, to Winnie Maxon the passage of the summer months
there proved a rest-cure. The tissues of brain and heart recovered. She
was neither oppressed as in the days of her marriage, nor hurried from
emotion to emotion as in the period of struggle which had followed her
escape. Her memories--of exultation, of pain, of poignant
feeling--softened in outline; becoming in some degree external to all
that she had done and suffered, she was the better able to assess it and
to estimate where it left her. A great gulf separated her from the woman
who had fled from Cyril Maxon; yet the essential woman had passed
through the flood of the gulf undrowned--with all her potentialities of
life, with her spirit schooled, but not broken. This is, perhaps, to say
that she had fought a drawn battle with the world; if it really came to
that, it was no mean achievement.
Dick Dennehy's new house was finished--at least it wanted only its last
coat of paint and, if the weather held fine, would soon be dry enough to
receive it profitably. By fits and starts consignments of its necessary
gear--conceived on extremely Spartan lines--arrived from London. But the
master of it had himself made no appearance. Every invitation from
Shaylor's Patch--and now and then the invitation amounted to an
entreaty, since Tora could not for the life of her make out what he
wanted done at the house--was met by protestations of absorbing work.
The problem which Winnie's imagination had forecasted did not arise--or
at least it exhibited no development. Dick's obstinate absence did not
disprove its existence, but might be said to suspend its animation.
Winnie, dwelling in the cottage where Godfrey Ledstone once abode, had a
rest from the other sex; here, too, a truce was called, after her brisk
series of engagements. She welcomed it; it would have seemed shallow to
pass too quickly from the thought of Bertie Merriam. She neither
rejected nor winced at the idea that the truce might be perpetual. With
Dennehy still away, the thought of the problem died down, leaving traces
only in the compassionate amusement with which she again, from time to
time, reflected that he had 'got over it.' She acquiesced very willingly
in the conclusion. As matters stood, life was full, pleasant, peaceful,
and fruitful in the growth of her mind.
"I don't know whether you'll ever transform the world, but at least
you're educating one ignorant woman, Stephen," she said.
Dr. Westermarck being finished, Stephen had, with a sudden jump,
transferred her to the study of Utopias, old and new; for these, of
course, must figure in the Synopsis.
"Ah, you bring some knowledge of life with you now. That makes learning
ever so much easier." He smiled at her. "I really ought to go and get
into some scrapes too. But there--I couldn't put my heart into the job,
so it wouldn't be much use."
"Wouldn't Tora object?"
"I'm the one exception which mars the otherwise perfect harmony of
Tora's conception of the male sex. She would be bound to greet any lapse
on my part with scientific exultation. But, I say, I'm not going to have
you burying yourself in the Synopsis."
"That's just what I came here to do--exactly as I put it to myself!"
"You shan't do it. You're much too young and pretty. I shall get some
young men down, to tempt you."
Two or three young men came, but they did not tempt Winnie. She found
herself possessed by a great caution. Her old confidence in her own
impulses was replaced by a deep distrust of any impulse. She stood on
the defensive against the approach of even a liking; she constituted
herself _advocatus diaboli_ whenever Stephen ventured to praise any of
his young friends. She found one shallow and conceited, another learned
but a bore, a third--well, there were limits to the allowable degree of
ugliness, now weren't there? Stephen laughed; his poor friends were
contributing to the payment of a score run up by other men.
At last in very decency Dick Dennehy had to come; Stephen sent him word
that, as he had built the house, so he would pull it down, if its owner
continued to show such a want of appreciation of his friendly labours.
He arrived early one afternoon in mid-September. He was perceptibly
changed; being broken into London harness had set its mark on him in
manner and in appearance. He was better groomed, his hair had been
persuaded to lie down, he had cut off the upturned bristly ends of his
moustache. His brogue had lost in richness; he said 'ye' much seldomer
when he meant 'you.' His ways were quieter, his arguments less
tempestuous, and his contradictions not so passionate. Though thus a
little outwardly and possibly inwardly conventionalized, he displayed
all his old friendly heartiness in his greeting of Tora and
Stephen--Alice had just gone back to school. Only when he turned to
Winnie, who was in the garden with them, did a shade of constraint
appear in his demeanour. She put it down to the memory of the note he
had sent her; she had not replied, and probably he thought that she had
resented it.
The constraint was due to a deeper cause. He had determined not to make
love to Winnie Maxon, and now, at the sight of her, he found that he
wanted to do it, and that the assurances which he had managed to make to
himself that he would not want to do it--at least would not be seriously
tempted to do it--were all in vain. In loyalty to his convictions, and
in accordance with a personal obstinacy which buttressed the
convictions, all these months he had fought his fight. Winnie was
forbidden to him; he had taken no pains to conceal his views from his
and her friends; he had taken great pains to conceal his feelings from
her, and conceived that he had, in the main at least, succeeded. But for
that house of his--but for wounding the Aikenheads' feelings--he would
have given himself a little longer period of quarantine. Yet he had felt
pretty safe until he saw Winnie. And he had brought his bag; he was
booked for a three days' stay--there in the very zone of danger.
"I was a fool to come," he kept saying to himself, while he was being
politely, and now and then urgently, requested to take note of and to
admire this and that feature of his new house. In truth he could take
very little interest in the house, for it had come over him, with sudden
but irresistible certainty, that he would never be able to live in it.
He could not say so, of course--not just now, and not without a much
better parade of reasons than he could manage to put into line
impromptu. But there the certainty was--full-blown in his mind. Unless
he could away with his convictions and his obstinacy, unless he could
undertake and succeed in his quest, it would be impossible for him to
live in the house here on the hill, with Winnie hardly a stone's throw
away at the cottage on the road to Nether End. The idea was
preposterous. Yet he had to go on looking at the house and admiring it.
The Aikenheads demanded nothing short of enthusiasm. About a house he
could never live in! Poor Dick Dennehy did his best to pump it up, but
the trials inherent in his position were terribly aggravated by this
incidental addition of the house. Cyril Maxon and Bertie Merriam, in
their kindred struggles with loyalties and convictions, had at least
been spared this irritating feature. Why, there, actually visible from
his study windows, were the chimneys of Winnie's cottage! Tora
triumphantly pointed them out to him.
Dick Dennehy had the gift--the genius--of his race; he saw the fun of
his own sufferings. As he surveyed the tops of Winnie's chimneys--with
Winnie at his elbow, discreetly awaiting his opinion as to whether their
presence enhanced the beauty of the landscape--his face wore a look of
rueful amusement, instead of the simple admiration which the outlook
from his study ought to have inspired in him. At the moment Tora and
Stephen were having an animated wrangle in the passage outside, relative
to the merits of a dustbin, sent on approval.
"I hope I don't intrude?" said Winnie, waving her hand towards her
chimney-pots.
"I'll be reminded of you, if I'm ever in danger of forgetting."
"We could almost start a system of communication--flag-wagging, or even
wireless. Anything except thought-transference! I couldn't risk that
with you--though you could with me quite safely."
"Ah, you're always teasing me, Winnie."
"You've not been nearly enthusiastic enough about the house, you know.
Make an effort."
"I'll be trying to say a few words on it after dinner. Will you be at
dinner?"
"I shall. Tora has asked me, to entertain you."
"You can do that--and more when you've the mind to it."
"I must warn you at once that I take most of my meals, except breakfast,
at the Patch--in brief intervals of relaxation from the Synopsis."
Dick had heard of the Synopsis. "You'll be learning a lot of nonsense,"
he remarked.
"Oh, I don't need the Synopsis to learn that. Just talking to people is
quite enough."
"We won't have a telegraph; we'll have a telephone, Winnie. Then I'll
hear your voice and admire your conversation." "And not see your face,"
he had very nearly added.
Winnie demurely surveyed the landscape again. "My chimneys are a pity,
aren't they? They spoil the impression of solitude--of being alone with
nature--don't they? But judging from Tora's voice--it sounds really
aggrieved--I think it's time we went and umpired about the dustbin. When
those two do quarrel, the contempt they express for one another's
opinions is awful."
If the situation had its pathetic side for poor Dick Dennehy, there was
more than one aspect on which a sense of humour could lay hold. Besides
Dick, impelled by love yet racked by conscience, and, in consequence, by
chimney-pots in the middle distance, there were the Aikenheads.
Engrossed in one another, in their studies and theories, they saw
nothing of what was going on under--and seemed now to Winnie as plain to
see as--their noses. They had bestowed immense pains on the house, and
had counted on giving Dick a triumphant surprise. His behaviour--for
even after dinner he achieved but a very halting enthusiasm--was a sore
disappointment. They understood neither why he was not delighted nor
why, failing that, in common decency and gratitude he could not make a
better show of being delighted. Good-tempered as they were, they could
not help betraying their feelings--Tora by a sudden and stony silence
touching the house of whose beauties she had been so full; Stephen by
satirical remarks about the heights of splendour on which Dick now
required to be seated in his daily life and surroundings. Dick marked
their vexation and understood it, but could not so transform his
demeanour as to remove it, and, being unable to do that, began by a
natural movement of the mind to resent it. "They really might see that
there's something else the matter," he argued within himself in
plaintive vexation. Within twenty-four hours of his arrival, the three
were manifestly at odds on this false issue, and the tension threatened
to become greater and greater. It was all ridiculous, a comedy of
mistakes, but it might end in a sad straining of an old and dear
friendship.
To avert this catastrophe, Winnie determined to give the go-by to coy
modesty. Dick Dennehy had not told her that he loved her, but she
determined to acquaint the Aikenheads with the interesting fact. What
would happen after that she did not know, but it seemed the only thing
to do at the moment.
After lunch on the second day of the visit, Dick Dennehy, in a desperate
effort to be more gracious, said that he would go across and have
another look at the house. Nobody offered to accompany him. Tora seemed
not to hear his remark; Stephen observed sarcastically that Dick might
consider the desirability of adding a ball-room and a theatre, and with
that returned to his labours on the Synopsis. Winnie sat smiling while
Dick departed and left her alone with Tora.
"You think he's not appreciative enough about the house, don't you,
Tora?" she asked.
"I think he just hates it, but I really don't know why."
"It's not his own house that he hates; it's my chimneys."
"Your chimneys? What in the world do you mean?"
"He can see them from his study window--just where he wants to be
undisturbed."
Tora might be a profound speculative thinker, but, no, she was not quick
in the little matters of the world. "Do you mean to say that the man
objects to seeing any single house from his windows? Really Dick is
putting on airs!"
"It depends on who lives in the single house."
"But you live there." Tora stared at her. "Have you quarrelled with him?
Do you mean to say he dislikes you?"
Winnie broke into a laugh. "On the contrary, Tora."
At last light dawned. A long-drawn "Oh!" proclaimed its coming. "I see.
I never do notice things like that. Then you've refused him, have you?"
"Oh no, he's never asked me. He never told me anything about it--not
directly, or meaning to, at least." This qualification in view of the
talk at the railway station. "But I'm sure of it."
"Then why doesn't he tell you? Or have you snubbed him hopelessly?"
"I haven't done much either way, but it's not that. You see, he thinks
that he's not free to marry me, and that I'm not free to marry anybody."
"Then he'd better stop thinking such nonsense," said Tora, with her
habitual and most unphilosophical contempt for other people's opinions.
"I don't know about that." Winnie shook her head doubtfully. "But I
think that it would ease the situation if you gave Stephen just a hint."
"I'll go and tell him at once." Hints were not in Tora's line.
The first result of her friend's mission which reached Winnie's ears was
a ringing peal of laughter from the sanctum where the Synopsis was in
course of preparation. It was Wednesday--a half-holiday for the
assistants--and Stephen was alone. When once the situation was
elucidated, he enjoyed the humour of it immensely.
"Well, we have been a pair of dolts, you and I, Tora. Poor old Dick! He
must have been wishing us, and the house too, at the bottom of the sea.
But what's to be done?"
"Why, you must tell him not to be so silly, of course; I don't know what
she'll say, but let him take his chance."
"I'm getting a bit shy of taking a hand in these complications. We
didn't make much of a success out of the Ledstone affair, among us! I
think I shall let it alone, and leave them to settle it for themselves."
"You never have the courage of your convictions. It's one of your worst
faults, Stephen." With this condemnation on her lips, Tora departed into
the garden.
When Winnie went in to resume her labours, Stephen looked up from his
books with a twinkle in his eye. "Trouble again, Winnie?"
"I really thought you'd better know about it, or you'd burn Dick's house
down."
"You seem to have a knack of setting fires ablaze too."
"You might just let it appear that you've come to the conclusion that
it's not the house which makes Dick so grumpy. Don't say a word about
me, of course."
"He'll think me much cleverer than I have been."
"Well, I should think you'd like that, Stephen. I should, in your
place."
He laughed good-humouredly. "Oh, well, I deserve that dig."
"It's rather funny how this sort of thing pursues me, isn't it? But it's
quite half your fault. If you will collect a menagerie of opinions, and
throw me into the middle of it----"
"It's not strange that the animals like the dainty morsel, even though
the keepers don't approve of the diet? But I didn't collect all the
animals."
"No," said Winnie, smiling reflectively. "I did pick up one or two for
myself in the course of my journeyings through the world. I'm not quite
sure I want any others."
"He's an awfully good fellow, old Dick."
"Yes. And now I'm going back to Utopia--where animals like only their
proper diet."
Meanwhile Dick Dennehy was not taking another look at his house, nor
endeavouring to form a more favourable estimate of it. He was walking up
and down in the field behind it, which under Tora Aikenhead's skilled
care had already assumed something of the semblance of a garden. He had
to settle his question one way or the other. If one way, then good-bye,
for a long while at least, to the new house and to Shaylor's Patch; if
the other, he would try his fortune with a good courage. Although his
case had points of similarity enough to justify Winnie in linking it
with those others which had presented themselves in her experience, it
was not identical with any one of them, but had its own complexion. He
was not called upon to defy public opinion and to confuse the lines of
social demarcation, as Godfrey Ledstone had been. Nor to revolutionize
his ideas and mode of life, like Bob Purnett. Nor to be what he must
deem disloyal to his profession and false to his work in the world,
like Bertie Merriam. Cyril Maxon's case was closer; yet Cyril had only
to pass, by an ingeniously constructed bridge, from the more extreme to
the less extreme of two theories, and in so doing found abundance of
approval and countenance among men of his own persuasion. Dick was
confronted with a straight, rigid, unbending prohibition from an
authority which he had always respected as final and infallible.
Yet he seemed asked to give up the whole of his real life, to empty life
of what made it worth living. Save for one or two boyish episodes of
sentiment, he had kept clear of love-affairs. He brought to Winnie's
service both the fresh ardour of a young man and the settled conviction
of maturity. He had never a doubt in his mind that for him it was this
woman or no woman; his knowledge of himself and his past record made the
certainty more trustworthy than it generally is. Given then that he had
a chance of winning her, it was a mighty sacrifice which was demanded of
him--even to the spoiling and maiming of his life, and the starvation of
his spirit.
His was a perfectly straight case; there was no confusing it, there
could be no golden bridge; a supreme authority on the one side, on the
other the natural man, fortified by every secular justification--for he
would be breaking no law of the land, infringing no code of honour,
injuring no man whose rights or feelings he was under an obligation to
respect. And he would be affording to the creature he loved best in the
world happiness, as he believed, and, of a certain, peace, protection,
and loving care--things of which she stood in need; to Dick Dennehy's
notions, notwithstanding his love and admiration, her record showed that
she stood sorely in need of them. Here, on one side of his mind, he
found himself in a paradoxical agreement with the authority which the
other side wanted to defy. It and he agreed about her past doings, but
drew from them a different conclusion. He adored her, but he did not
think that she could take care of herself. He believed that he could
take care of her--at the cost of defying his supreme authority; or he
would not use the word defying--he would throw himself on its mercy in a
very difficult case. The creature he loved best of all things in life
would do, he feared, more unpardonable things, unless he himself did a
thing which he had been taught to think unpardonable in itself. He
invited her to nothing that she was obliged to hold as wrongdoing; he
did not ask her to sin against the light she possessed. That sin would
be his. His chivalry joined forces with his love; to refrain seemed
cowardice as well as almost impossibility. There was the dogma--but
should there be no dispensation? Not when every fibre of a man's heart,
every impulse of a man's courage, cried out for it?
The sun sank to its setting. He stood in the garden, and watched how its
decline made more beautiful the gracious prospect. A little trail of
smoke rose in leisurely fashion from the chimneys of Winnie's cottage.
The air was very still. He turned and looked at the new house with a new
interest. "Would it be good enough for her, now?" asked Dick Dennehy.
The sudden vision of her in the house--of her dainty ways and gracious
presence, her chaff and her sincerity--swept over his mind. She had been
wrong--but she had been brave. Braver than he was himself?
To the horizon sank the sun. Dick Dennehy turned to look at it again. As
the glow faded, peace and quiet reigned. Very gradually evening fell. He
lifted his hat from his head and stood watching the last rays, the
breeze stirring his hair and freshening his brow. He stood for a long
time very still, as he was wont to stand, quiet, attentive, obedient, at
the solemn offices of his Church--the Church that was to him creed,
conscience, and half-motherland. Suddenly his soul was at peace, and he
spoke aloud with his lips, even as though in response to the voice of
One walking in the garden in the cool of the day. "I must do what I must
do, and leave it to the mercy of God."