Now I sit down to write my story and tell over again things in their
order, I find for the first time how inconsecutive and irrational a
thing the memory can be. One recalls acts and cannot recall motives;
one recalls quite vividly moments that stand out inexplicably—things
adrift, joining on to nothing, leading nowhere. I think I must have
seen Beatrice and her half-brother quite a number of times in my last
holiday at Bladesover, but I really cannot recall more than a little of
the quality of the circumstances. That great crisis of my boyhood
stands out very vividly as an effect, as a sort of cardinal thing for
me, but when I look for details, particularly details that led up to
the crisis—I cannot find them in any developing order at all. This
halfbrother, Archie Garvell, was a new factor in the affair. I remember
him clearly as a fair-haired, supercilious looking, weedily-lank boy,
much taller than I, but I should imagine very little heavier, and that
we hated each other by a sort of instinct from the beginning; and yet I
cannot remember my first meeting with him at all.
Looking back into these past things—it is like rummaging in a neglected
attic that has experienced the attentions of some whimsical robber—I
cannot even account for the presence of these children at Bladesover.
They were, I know, among the innumerable cousins of Lady Drew, and
according to the theories of downstairs candidates for the ultimate
possession of Bladesover. If they were, their candidature was
unsuccessful. But that great place, with all its faded splendour, its
fine furniture, its large traditions, was entirely at the old lady’s
disposition; and I am inclined to think it is true that she used this
fact to torment and dominate a number of eligible people. Lord Osprey
was among the number of these, and she showed these hospitalities to
his motherless child and step-child, partly, no doubt, because he was
poor, but quite as much, I nowadays imagine, in the dim hope of finding
some affectionate or imaginative outcome of contact with them. Nannie
had dropped out of the world this second time, and Beatrice was in the
charge of an extremely amiable and ineffectual poor army-class young
woman whose name I never knew. They were, I think, two remarkably
illmanaged and enterprising children. I seem to remember too, that it
was understood that I was not a fit companion for them, and that our
meetings had to be as unostentatious as possible. It was Beatrice who
insisted upon our meeting.
I am certain I knew quite a lot about love at fourteen and that I was
quite as much in love with Beatrice then as any impassioned adult could
be, and that Beatrice was, in her way, in love with me. It is part of
the decent and useful pretences of our world that children of the age
at which we were, think nothing, feel nothing, know nothing of love. It
is wonderful what people the English are for keeping up pretences. But
indeed I cannot avoid telling that Beatrice and I talked of love and
kissed and embraced one another.
I recall something of one talk under the overhanging bushes of the
shrubbery—I on the park side of the stone wall, and the lady of my
worship a little inelegantly astride thereon. Inelegantly do I say? you
should have seen the sweet imp as I remember her. Just her poise on the
wall comes suddenly clear before me, and behind her the light various
branches of the bushes of the shrubbery that my feet might not profane,
and far away and high behind her, dim and stately, the cornice of the
great façade of Bladesover rose against the dappled sky. Our talk must
have been serious and business-like, for we were discussing my social
position.
“I don’t love Archie,” she had said, _apropos_ of nothing; and then in
a whisper, leaning forward with the hair about her face, “I love
_you!_”
But she had been a little pressing to have it clear that I was not and
could not be a servant.
“You’ll never be a servant—ever!”