The dinner went off quite as well as any one could have expected. It was
rather like playing at bran pie. You put your hand into a disintegrating
substance and drew out something you had not expected to find. It might
be a thimble or a gollywog, but it was seldom appropriate, and it never
seemed to lead at all naturally to anything else.
Jim didn’t know any of the people they did, and he talked without ease,
solidly, as if talking were an excavating process.
He used his knives and forks correctly, but he didn’t know how to use
his ideas; they lacked the smooth shallowness of custom. It was as if he
only spoke to find something—or—when he meant what he said. Mr.
Egerton and Reggie were wonderfully deft and adaptable, but Viola
thought it a curiously long and slightly precarious evening. They were
always so very near something that might break.
When Viola was alone at last, and Cèleste had arranged the reading-lamp
carefully by her bed, and noiselessly closed the door, she did not begin
to read. She lay with her very small head on a very large expanse of
spotless linen pillow, thinking over the evening.
She took up a book beautifully bound for her by Ainley, whose taste in
books always went as far as their covers, then she put it down again.
‘I should like,’ she said to herself, ‘to hear him preach. I think he
wasn’t free to speak to-night. He was like some one who expects to get
caught. He ate perfectly properly. I think Reggie must have exaggerated
what he was like at the Blighs.’ I ought to go and call on Mrs. Bligh
some day. He has a funny Cockney voice. I don’t see why he doesn’t take
elocution lessons. I wish father hadn’t been so nice to him. Reggie
doesn’t like him. He was much nicer than father really—it didn’t show,
his being nice, but he doesn’t like him. I don’t myself, really, only he
isn’t like any one else.
‘I’m rather glad mother didn’t meet him——’ Viola flushed suddenly
under the disloyalty of her thoughts. Mrs. Egerton had sent a polite
message to her husband just before dinner—she hoped they would all
excuse her, but she had too bad a headache to leave her room. Viola knew
that Mrs. Egerton hadn’t got a headache; she was merely annoying her
husband. She knew, though she blamed herself for knowing it, that if
Mrs. Egerton had come down she would have been politely devastating to
Jim Barton; and that was why she hadn’t come down. Mrs. Egerton wished
to annoy her husband but she didn’t wish to spoil any of his business
arrangements. Mr. Egerton did not know this. He was merely very much
annoyed; and Harry and Reggie only wondered what was up.
Being a girl and being so dreadfully loved by a person so competent as
Mrs. Egerton was sometimes rather terrifying. It made you know what
people meant when you didn’t like their meanings.
It made your thoughts flicker in and out like frightened mice in the
house of an ever menacing cat. One good thing was, Viola hadn’t had to
have her evening talk with her mother, while her mind was still raw from
its contact with Jim. She could insert a little padding first, and she
was inserting the padding now.
Her mind ran unceasingly over the evening’s events. Her father had been
extraordinarily cordial; he had ordered champagne, and Mr. Barton drank
nothing but water. It was somehow or other a great pity Mr. Barton drank
nothing but water.
Mr. Egerton said, ‘Tee-totaller?’ and Mr. Barton had replied, ‘Yes—but
against my principles! I believe in doing all natural and delightful
things, but I’ve given up alcohol as a protest against its abuse.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Mr. Egerton had said, ‘it is the crime of the class you work
amongst.’
‘It’s the only crime they can all get hold of equally easily,’ Jim had
answered. ‘They can’t afford the more expensive crimes.’
Her father had dropped the subject, and, still with the air of overdone
consideration, had started up the topic of religion, but Mr. Barton
wouldn’t be drawn into it. He simply listened. He probably hadn’t agreed
at all, or else he had an idea that her father wasn’t sincere—that
would have been horrible; there was no reason why one shouldn’t talk
pleasantly and tactfully about religion without believing in it.
Then Harry came in late—she must speak to him about it—her father was
obviously very angry—that is to say, he’d said, ‘Late as usual, Harry,’
and raised an eyebrow. Reggie had been more sensible. He had got off
religion and taken up swimming and rowing—Mr. Barton had been in a
trial eight at Cambridge, but he hadn’t had enough time to get his blue.
Then they talked about Germany. Mr. Barton hadn’t been to Germany—but
he admired the Germans; that was a pity. Reggie and the _Morning Post_
disliked Germans very much, and felt sure they would have to be fought
and beaten. Mr. Barton said we ought to make friends with them, that
they were, on the whole—if they weren’t too conceited and militant—the
best people on the Continent. Reggie agreed they were too conceited, but
he didn’t agree they were good, and he thought we ought to be a great
deal more militant. Poor Mr. Barton was a pacifist—that had to come
out. It did suddenly, as if some one had upset a glass of wine by
mistake. Harry brought it out. He said, ‘But that sounds as if you
didn’t believe in war,’ and Mr. Barton had said very quickly, with quite
the most fighting eyes in the world, ‘I don’t.’
‘Never?’ the astonished Harry had blurted out. ‘Not if a man went for
you?’
‘Least of all then,’ Jim Barton had said. ‘Perhaps if he went for
somebody else—but there are usually better methods——’
‘I’m hanged if I know what they are!’ Harry had exclaimed. Then Reggie
had intervened, and very nicely, without being a bit prejudiced,
laughing all the time, he had shown how little good arbitration and the
Hague Conference were or ever would be. He had explained everything so
well that her father said it couldn’t be better put. Viola herself
believed Mr. Barton would be convinced now.
But he wasn’t convinced. He said, ‘So you think the brains of men will
always be chained to gunpowder? I don’t.’ But he hadn’t gone on with it.
Reggie had asked him if he’d read _The Riddle of the Sands_. But Mr.
Barton hadn’t read it. He said he’d read books in German that were the
same kind of thing. He added, ‘I don’t like inflammatory stuff.’
Viola told him about the Navy League herself—she belonged to it—and
she had explained how very necessary it was for England to be prepared,
then nothing would happen. But Jim had laughed at her and said, ‘When
you dress to go out, don’t you go out? I think I should if I had a ball
dress on!’
Reggie had explained that if you happen to be the richest country in the
world it is wiser not to be unarmed in the society of thieves.
‘Yes, if you must look on other countries as thieves, and if you will be
burdened with riches,’ Jim had replied. Unfortunately he was not even an
Imperialist.
It was really very puzzling for any one not to be an Imperialist.
Not exactly wicked, of course, but rather like having a principle
against eating your own breakfast. It was worse to be a teetotaller and
pacifist, because in a kind of way temperance and peace were virtues,
and it is such bad form to have virtues that other people don’t care
much about. Besides teetotallers and pacifists were usually awful
creatures and yet Mr. Barton didn’t look very awful when he smiled.
Of course she wouldn’t see him again unless she went to hear him preach
at Poplar. There must be a map of London in the house; she had
discovered that Poplar was in London.
The men had been ages over their wine—Viola had known they would be.
Harry was going out to a dance. He had rushed in and asked who that
awful bounder was, kissed her and advised her to come with him; when she
told him she couldn’t he had rushed out. But the others were downstairs
for ages, persuading Mr. Barton not to encourage the horrid strike. She
wondered how they were doing it. Then they came upstairs and she saw
they hadn’t persuaded him.
Her father was naturally very much annoyed, and had asked her to sing
something. Reggie was full of jokes, but somehow or other Viola had felt
that under the jokes Reggie was even more annoyed than her father.
She sang ‘The Rosary,’ because every one was singing it.
Her little beautiful voice had slipped its golden sound over all their
troubled spirits, and charmed them into peace. When she had finished
singing she saw that there were tears in Mr. Barton’s eyes. He did not
speak at all.
She had gone on singing, but she had felt a curious trembling in her
limbs which she had never felt before while she sang, as if all the
chords of her being vibrated and were stirred cruelly by the beauty of
sound. She couldn’t go on very long; though none of them had wanted her
to stop.
Mr. Barton went away at once, and her father had letters to write.
Reggie had kissed her. Of course he had a perfect right to kiss her.
It was funny that poets thought love so exquisite, when it really seemed
rather tiresome—like being trodden on by mistake. Well, of course,
Reggie was a dear and she would get used to it. Sometimes even now she
liked it, and she always liked Reggie. They were to go and look at some
furniture to-morrow. Reggie had said it was just what they wanted, but
Viola wondered, because she knew so very well exactly what she liked
furniture to be, if it would be what she wanted?
Reggie spoke as if their tastes would naturally be exactly the same.
They liked the same dances, the same songs, the same books, the same
houses—not always the same people; probably they would like the same
furniture. Only it rather mattered, because you had to live with
furniture—and people, too, of course mattered. You had to live with
people. Being married meant the same people, and even more the same
person—always the same person.
Some people were not easy to know. You never had enough of them—they
were formidable—exciting—strange. You wanted to find out what they
meant. They weren’t just tidy and clean and in love with you.
Viola put out the light and snuggled down into the vast expanse of her
very soft dark bed. She tried to see Reggie’s face—she ought to
accustom herself to dream of it, but she couldn’t—his eyeglasses seemed
to get in the way, and quite unbidden, startling—almost alarming in
their intensity—she saw a pair of very vivid blue eyes looking straight
at her—the darkness could not hide them—the enormous security of her
engagement was no barrier to them. All that was built up around her for
defence and solidity slipped away from her. She was alone in the dark
facing those blue eyes—they asked her nothing at all, but they were
extraordinarily formidable.