GROWTH
Helena, when a year's passing had worn away the novelty of keeping
house and made its process slower, was naturally rather bored at times,
when Hubert was shut up with his work. No one could have been happier
so long as she was with her husband; she still thought him immensely
clever, which is most good for married happiness; still found their
walks and treats the very greatest fun; but in the winter especially,
there were so many gaps of idle loneliness.
Luckily the remedy was near at hand.
To a girl almost bursting with the ashamed desire for self-development
a garden suburb must be Paradise indeed. There is a natural connection
between New Art cottages with gardens round, and (let us say)
enthusiasms. The ordinary man--that tame myope who gratefully accepts
life as it is--contentedly exists in squares, crescents and straight
lines; breathing the common air and never worrying at all whether his
house, which may be number 246, has individuality or not. But the
enthusiast, whom others call by a less noble title, is of a different
sort. He holds that what we see and breathe, especially when young, we
are. His children, then, must have a quite uncommon setting; not grown
like the sordid brats in 245 "desirable villas" adjoining. No, they
must live where there is air and a big back-yard patch; where the word
garden throws a soft glamour over muddied and unfinished roads; where
everything is beautiful and man himself is not so vile.
For, after all, he asks, what really wicked man would ever trouble to
live out at a tube's end? No! Vice ever lurks among the fogs and
shrubless rabbit-warrens of mid-London. It would not flourish in a
garden suburb.
So out he goes, and sees to it that his house shall have something
different from all the other small white dwellings round about him. An
architect might say that there was neither use nor fitness in his
timbered turret at the north-east corner, but he himself knows just why
it is there. He knows that he has flung his little pebble, all he can
avail, upon the heap that some day, we all hope, will crush the
soul-destroying isms out of life, and make of man, not a type in
monotone, but a great hive of multi-coloured individuals.
So far, so good; but more remains to tell.
He settles proudly underneath his turret and waits for the great change
to start. The neighbours call and he discovers they are cultured.
They are very cultured. And he--with a sick horror he knows at length
that he is not. All these people here have something different, not a
mere turret--something different about themselves. Menzies believes
that eating sheep is murder in the sight of Heaven, and the same with
cows. Du Cane will not let his children wear boots, because the notion
is not Greek. Farren is convinced that you must sleep with your feet
to the south and your head, of course, in the opposite direction.
Blythe-Egerton believes in ghosts but says they can't have clothes.
Jerningham lives next the golf club house, an envied site, and holds
success in games has always been the first precursor of a nation's
downfall. Escott knows exactly who should marry what; whilst Ferguson
can quite explain the Post-Impressionists, but fails to understand the
Royal Academy--peculiar in a Scotchman. Yes, every single one of them
has some outstanding gift or knowledge, making him a pleasant man to
meet.
So out he goes, post-haste, to search a quality, and wishes now that he
had not spent all that extra money upon his symbolic turret. He knows
a better secret, now, of how real individuality is gained. It consists
not in bricks and mortar nor in any latticed garden-work--though these
may be its outward signs--but in a being different. He hurries out and
buys the works of Chesterton and Bernard Shaw as a beginning.
Helena, of course, was predisposed to it since Devonshire.
She did not long to become different, so much: she hankered to cease
being ignorant.
Hubert was so clever, but that discouraged more than it helped her. He
talked quite brilliantly about such deep things, but he would not
explain. He laughed and said she was a jolly child. He always treated
her rather as one and certainly they had great fun together, but she
longed to be clever without getting old, and when she had told him so,
he simply laughed and said she ought to be content to have such quaint
ideas.
"It's far better," he added, "to be original than clever. Don't you
worry your dear little head with dull ideas and facts."
But Helena did worry.
She had now, apart from her old desire for self-development and
knowledge about life, all these dull lonely hours to fill; and as she
went about, slowly getting to know the people near, she found like our
enthusiast that every one of them was full of something--some vital,
all-absorbing topic, if nothing more than golf or their own handicap.
And that, she saw at once, was what she had to have if she wished ever
to make her life really full. She could not go to matinées, like some,
or Hubert missed her all the afternoon; and if they went to an At Home,
he always dashed away at five, which looked so rude, and people--she
felt sure--said afterwards that she could not have much hold over him,
so soon. She tried novels, but these she really could not understand.
Hubert watched cynically her attempts to get at grips with a sex-novel
more sexual than is expected even in these days of censorships and free
advertisement.
"But, Hubert," she said finally, "why did she do that? Wasn't she fond
of her husband? He seems quite nice. Do these terrible things really
happen?"
"Oh no," he answered, as one would speak to a child. "Of course they
never happen really."
Helena looked puzzled. "Then why do people write or read them?" she
asked.
"My dear girl," he answered in the heavy-father manner that gave him
such pleasure, "if you could answer that, you would have solved one of
the most interesting problems about human nature!"
So then she was puzzled again and laid aside the book half read, before
she got even to the chapter that was really censured and commonly read
first.
Not that way, she saw, lay illumination.
At last she tried another road. "You know," she said reflectively one
night, during those long hearthside chats that neither really would
have changed for any other social form, "I like all the people here and
so on, but they're terribly busy, aren't they, and I always feel I've
sort of come too late."
"How sort of?" he replied indulgently.
"Well, I've got no real friends and you're busy so much with your dull
old work. Don't you know anybody?--really know, I mean--old friends,
who aren't too far away?"
Hubert thought for a few moments. "It sounds absurd," he said at last,
"but I was such a hermit till I met you that I don't believe I've got a
single woman friend."
Helena, he noticed, was not flattered in the least degree. That sort
of thing was what made her so splendid. He told himself that a woman
who was womanly would be a bore about the house, and smiled adoringly
on his own child-like specimen, who waited silently, as though quite
sure that he would find a friend in the same way that after some time
he had found her brooch. But there was a long pause and he made no
suggestions.
"Well, what about men then?" she added simply. "I don't mind."
And he was once again enchanted by her naïveté.
"You shall have the pick of all my man-friends," he said, and then
puzzled her by laughing.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Oh, you're so perfect, dearest!" he said, and got up and kissed her.
It needed some thought, none the less. Of his old pals--he suddenly
remembered that he had been married over a year now, and not seen any
one of them or wanted to--there were not many who lived near, and some
of these ... well, they were all right in their way, but vaguely he
felt they were not quite fit to introduce to any one so sweet as his
girl-wife.... Marriage frequently turns cynics into sentimentalists.
(The converse can be well ignored.)
"I know," he cried suddenly.
"I felt sure you would," she said. It was just these remarks that made
her such an excellent companion. "Who is it then?"
"Old Boyd--old Kenneth Boyd. He's just the very man you'd like. One
feels so awfully at home with him, he's restful you know;
old-friend-in-five-minutes sort of fellow. Oh and," he added, "I
forgot just for the moment! There is a wife too."
"I think I'm almost sorry," said Helena reflectively. "I don't think
he sounds the sort of person who'd be much good unless alone. But I'm
so silly with words. I never can explain and I expect I'm wrong."
There seemed, at any rate, some wisdom in her cryptic estimate.
The dinner-party was not a success.
Helena was so charming to Kenneth Boyd that Hubert, almost beyond
himself with pride and refraining with difficulty from kissing her when
she was too especially delicious, wondered why on earth he had so long
delayed showing his old friends how sweetly original a little simpleton
he had secured in spite of all their jeers. Kenneth, over a glass of
port from the local grocer, was absolute enthusiasm and delighted his
host till he turned suddenly and said; "Now own that I was absolutely
right?" With the wives, however, it was different. Mrs. Boyd said
afterwards to her husband: "Just the poor little undeveloped fool one
would expect any one so conceited to take as his wife!" whilst Helena
thought her a rude pig, and neither was too subtle in concealing her
opinion.
This instinct of hostility was fatal to any real union between the
households. Hubert noted with amusement how, at each fresh encounter,
the two wives became more and more affectionately cold, and soon kissed
on meeting.
He turned, with Helena still urging him, to other possibilities.
It was then that he thought of Geoffrey Alison.
"Geoffrey Alison," exclaimed Hubert with far more conviction than about
Kenneth Boyd. "He really _is_ the man! Amusing, clever, full of
energy, and too young to be really busy." This in a condescending way.
"Why, how old is he?" she enquired. "I want some one, you know, who is
cleverer than me and can tell me things at galleries and places."
He smiled at her. "Well, I think he could tell you things, he must be
twenty-nine by now. Besides, I was able once to do him a good turn, he
is a sort of protégé; so he'd be only too glad to take you about and as
you call it, tell you things at galleries and places. He's pretty good
on art."
The word protégé was rolled upon his tongue; the episode of Geoffrey
Alison had pleased him a good deal; but Helena did not seem reassured.
"Oh, thank you!" she said, girlishly for these days when she had begun
duly to expand as wished. "If he'd think he was doing it as a great
favour, just to pay you back, I'd rather look at pictures and things by
myself and puzzle out their meaning. It's only I've begun so late."
She paused for a moment, and then without enthusiasm, almost sulkily;
"What did you do for him?"
Hubert embarked on it with gusto.
"Why, it wasn't really very much. It was just after my first book came
out, when I was twenty-six or so and he was at the Varsity or
somewhere. I suppose he read a notice or heard the book was selling or
something. Anyhow, he wrote me a most charming letter, the first I
ever had from any stranger, congratulating me on my success and asking,
if you please, how I had managed it as he heard I was young and he
wanted to become an author too! I answered all the usual stuff about
hard work and so on, which I see now he must have thought astounding
twaddle if he really was at Oxford, and told him when he came to Town
I'd like to meet him and perhaps could give him a few introductions.
As a matter of fact," he went on after brief reflection, "I never did
the last because I don't believe in it; but he came round at nights and
talked to me and always said I had encouraged him a lot just when a
little bucking-up was needed."
"And did he?" was Helena's sole comment.
Hubert at times could not follow her mind, fledgeling though it was, in
all its flights. "Did he what, dear?"
"Why, did he become an author?" answered Helena, with that impatient
tolerance which women keep for these occasions.
"Oh no," he said, vaguely annoyed, now, that he had not guessed it.
"Rather not! He's an artist now. Not terribly successful, you know,
but getting along. I don't think you would care much for his pictures,
though."
Secretly, within his mind he reconstructed Alison, remembering now some
not too pleasant drawings that he had brought along one night;
wondering if he had mentioned him too soon. But he saw only a keen,
harmless youth of the artistic type; a white man, certainly, who, even
if he had a morbid side, would never show it to a girl--or to his
benefactor's wife.
Yes, it was excellent. He had feared sometimes that she must be lonely
in the mornings or from five to seven, and Alison, he knew, was of the
work-when-I-feel-in-the-mood brigade (yes, it had certainly been
Oxford), for he had finally been forced to tell him he was absolutely
never free till after dinner-time.
He was the very man indeed. He spent his days in galleries, museums,
theatres; wanted not only something new, like the Athenians, but every
blessed new thing going; and if a heretic therefore on Art, was full of
knowledge and when he cared to, could be very nice.
Helena thought him very nice indeed.
Of course he was ever so much cleverer than she was; she need not have
feared that; and yet he did not seem to mind how elementary the thing
was that she wished to see. He came with her and would explain it all.
And he was nearly always free. Hubert had said that he was too young
to be busy, and yet she felt slightly puzzled. If Geoffrey Alison
could be so nice to friends, of whom he must have several, it did seem
odd that Hubert never could afford a morning for his wife, when he had
only one! But maybe Mr. Alison had not got many friends as yet or
wasn't as nice to them all?
At any rate life up at Hampstead was far less boring now. Sometimes on
days when there was not much house-keeping to do, they would go by tube
or 'bus to Trafalgar Square and spend long hours in the National
Gallery or twenty minutes in the Tate to see the Watts room and three
of the statues. At other times they would just ramble on the Heath,
and prim Mrs. Herbertson, the vicar's wife, amused Helena one day
enormously by thinking Mr. Alison was Hubert.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, dear Mrs. Brett!" she exclaimed, when Helena
laughingly told her the mistake; "but seeing you two about upon the
Heath so often in the mornings, I quite thought----! You must forgive
my stupidity, please?" And she smiled a false smile.
Helena thought this delicious, considering that Hugh was tall and broad
and dark and looked like a celebrity at once, whilst Mr. Alison was
rather short and slim, not one half so good-looking--funny-looking,
somehow, even when quite serious--with fair hair always a wee bit too
long!
"Won't Hugh be convulsed?" she asked.
"I don't think I should tell him," he said, to her absolute surprise.
"But why on earth not?" she enquired.
He would not tell her. In other things he was so kind; unlike her
husband, he would try to fill her gaps in education; but here he was
quite firm. He only let her force him to say that Hubert was a
splendid fellow but a curious sort of devil--which she had learnt
already, although she did not think that Mr. Alison should say so. He
added that you never knew. And finally she gave it up, quite angry.
But she said nothing to her husband and Mrs. Herbertson might easily
have made the same mistake again, except that she learnt Hubert was not
a church-goer--an atheist, she called him--and cut Helena entirely.
This left the young couple free, without social remorse, to make the
most wonderful excursions on Hubert's one free day. All Sunday; the
afternoon walk; meal-times; after dinner--such was what Hubert gave
her, and for the rest, always half-conscious of his selfishness, he
felt delighted to think whilst working that Helena would not be bored.
She was so busy, dear little simpleton, with this chimæra of her
education!
It was Geoffrey Alison who first took her to causeries and lectures
(she learnt almost at once to recognise a causerie, because the seats
cost more), which took place at the Institute, conveniently after tea.
Surprisingly good men came down--or up?--to speak, and spoke on a
variety of subjects. Helena, always too nervous to air her knowledge
before Hubert who was so clever and looked upon her (she knew) as a
child, gradually began to juggle chaotically in her brain with such
terms as Ethics, Syndicalism, Molecules, Collectivism, and Eugenics.
It was all most difficult, she told herself, but frightfully worth
while.
"Odd of her, this thirst for culture, isn't it?" said Hubert smilingly
to Kenneth Boyd, on one of their rare meetings away from the hostile
wives; "but it's quite harmless and it keeps them quiet."
Kenneth Boyd spoke gloomily. "Not always," he said. Perhaps he knew
more of Woman, even though he never wrote about her. "Sometimes it has
the opposite effect."
"Oh, I know what you mean," Hubert replied, not caring to be
patronised; "but Helena is not that sort. She doesn't want the Vote.
She's such a charming little innocent," and he laughed, half love but
half pity.
"Really?" said the enigmatic Boyd. His thoughts had taken a far ampler
sweep, and he spoke almost darkly.
Hubert did not answer. He was still thinking of the Vote. Most men
persistently whittle down Woman's whole platform to a mere splinter
convenient for smashing.
"Why," he elaborated, "if she were given it, she wouldn't know what she
had got to do with it."