fair specimen of that now antiquated genre, The New Drama. It had the
monosyllabic title, the insistent realism, the contempt for form and
dramatic convention, the arid conversation with lapses of brilliance,
the admirable acting, and, above all, the Great Gloom. It was
naturally a play with a point, showing, justly and forcibly, the
hopeless inadequacy of modern life to provide the average man and woman
with anything like a Unity of Interest. The characters drifted from
home which they dreaded to work which they loathed and in the evening
they made the return journey. Nothing held their lives together,
nothing remained as a permanent, unifying interest. There was love,
but, as Mr Villiers Wentworth pointed out, the young man is barred
socially and economically from indulging in anything but
hole-and-corner affairs just when he most needs real sympathy.
"Not a good play," said Martin as they walked out into the flaring
streets and joined the joyous welter of confusion at Piccadilly. "The
man's got no sense of humour and he thinks that everyone is miserable
who hasn't got two hundred a year. The poor are just as happy as the
rich. Of course they oughtn't to be, but they are."
"But there was a point," said Freda, "about unity of interest. It may
be obvious, but it's true. Didn't you drift? Haven't I drifted?"
They turned into a restaurant.
As they supped they forgot about the play. But later Martin's mind
returned to the subject.
"Come back," said Freda suddenly. "Penny."
"Hand over," he answered, smiling as he started.
"Well, what is it?"
"You, of course."
"I'm sorry for that. You looked so sad."
"I'm feeling ashamed," he confessed.
"What of?"
"Of the way I've thought of you. I've been so selfish. I only cared
for my own escape from drifting. It's been my work, my life, my love.
I have been thinking of you as the person who would make my life
perfect. It's been all me, me, me. When we first met I thought of you
and your work. Now it's only me and my work."
"That's as it should be."
"No, no, it isn't. A year ago I should have hated myself for thinking
like this."
"Perhaps you have learned as well as lived."
"I've been a brute and there's an end of it." He was deriving a secret
pleasure from his self-depreciation. There was bliss in humiliating
himself before her, in grovelling at the feet of her whom he adored.
If he could not get the conventional thrill from the confession of past
affairs and failings, he would achieve the ecstasy of self-torture by
laying bare a loftier mistake.
But she laughed at him. "Silly Billy," she said. "Pay the waiter and
I'll tell you."
She told him as they drove back together in their taxi.
"After all," she began, "compare my work with yours. Mine is drudgery.
Yours is big and important. It doesn't matter what becomes of mine,
but it matters a lot what becomes of yours, I hate mine and I love
yours. I want to give myself up to yours, to make it easier and
better. Can't you see, Martin dear, that isn't selfishness or
unselfishness. Those words don't count in such a case. If we love,
then I'm you and you're me, and one person can't give to himself or
take away from himself surely."
"It sounds so specious," he said. "And yet I still feel greedy, as
though I were denying your right to be yourself."
"I don't want to be myself. I want to be different. I'm as greedy as
you are and more so, only differently. As it is, the word isn't real.
We're both giving and both taking and there's an end of it."
He was silent for a moment. "It's no use my trying to say how perfect
you are," he said at last.
"Dear, delightful, serious, conscience-stricken gloomkins," she laughed
at him. "What does all this matter ... how we share things, I mean?
The only real thing is enthusiasm, wanting and feeling and loving. You
were at a loose end until you began to feel; you couldn't work, you
couldn't do anything. Nor could I. And now work is all changed and
seems better and easier. The office is a palace for me, India a
pleasure garden for you. Do stop worrying and be sensible."
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'll try and be good. You're always right.
This taxi goes far too fast. We're in your street."
"Bother," she said.
"Let's tell him to drive on somewhere else and come back in another
one."
"No. You've spent far too much and we've done that often enough. I'm
going to be a good girl to-night."
"Tyrant."
"Wastrel."
"He's stopping. One more kiss."
Through streets that more than ever resembled enchanted pathways in a
forest of shadow and silver, Martin went back exulting to his hotel.
IX
It was the second week in January when Martin went down to The
Steading: he merely stayed to collect books and clothes and returned at
once to London. While he was there he told his uncle and aunt that he
was engaged to be married.
That night John Berrisford discussed the matter with his wife. "Well,"
he began, "what about our young Martin?"
"I suppose it's all right," said Mrs Berrisford quietly. "He's very
young, but that seems to be the fashion nowadays."
"Yes, that doesn't matter. Long engagements are tragic, unhealthy
things, but they'll be apart and he ought to be able to marry almost at
once. Quite a lot of civilians do."
"And she's quite a nice girl."
John Berrisford gave the slight wriggle of the shoulders for which we
have only the excessive word "shrug."
"Don't you approve?" added his wife.
"Yes and no. On the whole, no." He kicked at the fire testily.
"She's quite a nice girl and clever and reasonable beyond the average.
If Martin were going to hang about in town, well and good. But really
is she the wife of an Indian Civilian?"
"But, John, surely! You with your ideas about freedom! You don't
believe in the marriage of convenience, I know. Isn't Martin to have
his choice?"
"Of course he shall have every choice. I'm not one to bluster or give
orders or interfere. He's going to marry the girl, not I. I know
that. But I'd like him to think a little first. Do consider the
facts. Freda is clever and quick. Perhaps she really cares for
Martin, perhaps she's only sick to death of the hellish existence
decreed by modern civilisation for penniless orphans of the female sex.
But she has lived in a groove, she has never met people--not the kind
of people she'd run up against in India. She doesn't like games or
society. She likes talking and arguing and lying in bed. She'd hate
the Anglo-Indian just as she hates any kind of pomp and circumstance.
She hasn't the vaguest notion as to what they'll expect of her. Worse
still, she hasn't even health. She would be invalided home in a year
and Martin with a salary of three or perhaps four hundred a year would
have to support a wife whom he only saw on leave. You've got to
consider his career and his general happiness. There is no reason why
he shouldn't find a woman who understands the kind of life and
behaviour, a woman who could fit in, and yet has brains and charm
enough for an intelligent person."
"Mary Brodrick?" suggested Mrs Berrisford. "The kind of girl who sings
about her caravan resting after dinner?"
"We needn't go as far as that. Something between the two."
"You're a heartless old schemer, John. We must respect his choice."
"Absolutely. But I'm fairly confident about the result. Anyhow there
is plenty of time and it's Martin's first affair."
"Are you sure?"
"I have watched the signs of times. This is the first time he has
taken a month to see the varsity match."
"But he is stubborn when he has once settled on a thing. He doesn't
decide quickly, I know, but when he has he is firm."
"We'll see. As it is, I suppose you must have her down for Easter. I
got her her present job and I know her employers well. I can easily
get them to allow her a holiday then. And when we've got them, we must
leave them very much alone."
"But surely----"
"My dear, it's the only hope. Keep them apart, hint at the
unsuitability of marriage, and they'll elope on nothing in a
fortnight's time. That's quite certain. My idea is to bang them
together fairly hard. I don't want it to hurt, but I do want them to
have a clear idea as to what they are both made of."
"Do you think it's quite fair?"
"Isn't it what they would want themselves? It's the only possible
thing we can do. And also," he added quietly, "it will give a certain
interest to next Easter."
But there was no need to beg a holiday for Freda. In February, when
the winds came driving up the Channel and brought to England a
month-long burden of rain and sleet, her health gave way again and she
was warned that she was not strong enough for the wear and tear of an
office life. For most people it is true that colds are not liable to
the laws of cause and effect: they happen or they don't and to be
soaked to the skin is no more fatal than to bask in the sun. But for
Freda to arrive at the office with feet wet and cold meant certain
visitation. And by six o'clock she was always worn out. Now she would
have to rely on an uncle and aunt. The uncle had money and had offered
already to release Freda from the misery of work, but she had refused,
so intolerable had seemed his great Victorian mansion on Sheffield's
edge. She had wanted, in her youthful courage, to work and to be free.
But now there was no use in fighting and she yielded partly from a
consideration of hard fact, partly because her uncle had retired from
his business and was coming to London. Idleness in town with an
allowance! By privation she had been taught the meaning and the value
of both. So it was as a woman of moderate means and unlimited leisure
that Freda came to The Steading for Easter.
Martin came from Oxford jaded and tired out. He had had to work hard
in order to make up for a vacation of complete indolence. The wet
February had brought floods and stinted exercise and despondency: it
had been tedious work, toiling over a new language in those lonely Ship
Street rooms. His soul hungered for sympathy, his body for the
infinite swell and splendour of the moor and for the cold sting of the
winds that whirled across it like the thongs of a lash.
For a week he stayed about the house and strolled in the near woods
with Freda, whose recent illness had left her far too weak for real
walking. She hadn't the strength nor could she risk a strain or chill.
So Martin lingered with her all day, while they built fantastic castles
of hopes and visions. Then the inactivity grew intolerable to his
body, tore at his nerves, and made him ravenous for the moor and the
golf-links. Freda despised golf and could not understand how any sane
person could be bothered with it. They squabbled about it gently,
never suspecting that it might come to matter.
Fate fought against Freda.
Martin, whenever during these days he handled a club, found that he
could do nothing wrong: he was "on his game." And the Cartmells came
down for the Easter recess. Godfrey had captured the seat two years
ago and had settled down comfortably on a back bench from which his
wife intended to oust him. But the back-bencher may live strenuous
nights and days: he too was tired and wanted air and exercise. And so
in the afternoons Martin was called upon as much by civility as by the
craving of his heart to motor with them to the golf-course and join in
a foursome. Desperate warfare took place in which Martin was Viola's,
Godfrey Margaret Berrisford's ally. And Martin was wonderful. His
drives flew far and low, straight for the flag or the direction post:
no ugly jarring told him of the topped iron-shot: his short putts ran
straight into the middle of the hole. He dug his partner's foozled
drives out of heather and hedge and laid her wild approaches dead with
a niblick. Up on that lonely course with only the wind and the white
clouds for neighbours, with no one to keep them back or hurry them on,
with turf so springy that a foot could never tire, so spongy-soft that
a brassie might be lightly taken and effectively wielded, with the
exquisite strain of even conflict, with matches taken to the last green
and won, perhaps by Martin's inimitable 'run-up'--yes, it was golf.
The joy of it was almost insupportable. Martin began to live for those
afternoons; yet, if he had been off his game, had sliced with his
driver and topped with his irons, as was indeed his wont, the golf-club
would have lost its appeal: there is little pleasure in playing golf
badly, but there is all the world in playing above your form.
Once Freda came up to watch them and walk as far as she could. But she
was plainly bored, pleaded fatigue, and went back to the little
club-house where she sat reading. To Martin, in his present mood of
triumphant exultation, it seemed incredible that anyone could fail to
see the point of it.
He tried to convince her. "Perhaps you can't imagine the thrill that
conies from a really true hit: really it's one of the few good things
in the world. The ball goes off clean and sweet and leaves you with a
faint tingling that lets you know you've done the trick. And then you
climb a ridge and there's the ball white and glistening on the green.
That means you've done exactly what you set out to do and that you've
got a long putt to beat Bogey. And if you ram it in!"
"Baby!" she said, laughing. "Did 'ums like 'ums bouncey ball."
At first he laughed too and told himself that naturally they couldn't
share all the same tastes. In the morning and evening he stayed with
her, neglecting his work. But gradually he came to feel that there was
something more than jocosity in her denunciation of the bouncey ball.
Soon after Easter one of Freda's colds kept her in bed for breakfast.
It was the Cartmells' last day but one and everything pointed to a
final test of strength. They went over in the morning and stayed to
lunch at the club-house. There were two great matches, of which each
side gained one. Martin had not yet lost his skill: he had dreaded the
day of torture when he would go "right off."
"Let's have another nine holes," said Viola Cartmell as they took an
early tea. "We aren't keeping Martin from his duty. And it's our last
chance and such an evening."
They agreed to play and nerved themselves for faultless execution.
An hour later Martin lay upon the steep bank at the edge of the ninth
green. Now he had grasped most certainly, what Freda would never
grasp, the mystery of Ham and Eggs. In the fine light of sunset the
moor seemed to tower inimitably above them, crowned with its eternal
tors, clear-cut as by a razor's edge against the vast blue emptiness
behind. The April breeze was whispering in the grass and timid larks
soared and plunged and hung singing in the void. Before him was the
smooth-shaven green, true as a billiard cloth but humped with testing
undulations. And there were the three other players awaiting with
tense anxiety the future of the match. Godfrey was kneeling to take
the line of his putt: the ball would end its journey along the side of
a veritable mountain, a glorious stroke to achieve! Farther back were
Margaret and Viola. Suddenly the breeze caught them, snatched at a
stray wisp of hair, played with their skirts, and gave a last caress to
cheeks already kissed to flame. There were grace and strength knit
perfectly: to Martin they seemed, after the slight form of Freda,
tremendous. Yet why shouldn't women be strong? He wanted them to be
strong, to walk with him, to fear neither wind nor weather. And
Freda...
His thoughts returned swiftly to the match. Godfrey was on the point
of playing: he had this, a ten footer, to halve the hole and the match.
There was silence and then the gentle tap of the club on a rubber-cored
ball. One gazed, one shouted. The ball had lipped the hole and swung
out to the left.
In the car they fought the whole match over again.
"If only I hadn't given you the sixteenth this morning----"
"No, it was my fault. If I miss two-foot putts, you can't be
expected----"
And thus during the whole journey superb concentration on an end to be
won, superb oblivion to work and wealth and weariness.
Martin found Freda yawning in the porch.
"I thought you were staying upstairs all day," he began.
"Who said so?"
"The maid, I think."
"Well, I never said anything about it. You don't seem very glad to see
me."
"Of course I am. Only I meant that I would have come back earlier if I
had known."
"I wouldn't keep you from your golf."
He sat beside her, but she did not welcome him. She was hurt.
"If I'd only known, I wouldn't----"
"Day after day," she whispered. "I know you like to be out and about.
I don't claim you always, do I? But sometimes, surely."
"I didn't know," he repeated remorsefully. "I didn't know."
"Yesterday you went and to-morrow you'll go."
"No, I won't. Freda, I'm a brute. I've been rotten to you. I've
nothing to say for myself."
"You've got to go to-morrow."
"I won't. You don't want me to go."
"You must go. I'm not going to keep you, if you don't stay of your own
accord. The ball is much more amusing than I am."
He pleaded, he fought against her, but she insisted on his going.
The punishment was effective. He went in anguish and played with no
zest for the game. He sliced, he topped, he missed short putts. The
match fizzled out on the fourteenth green, a fiasco.
The Cartmells hurried back to London and Martin remained to make peace
with Freda. He had been unspeakably pained by the sordidness and waste
of energy and peace that quarrelling had entailed. He hated the
suspicions and embarrassments that must linger on: he was passionately
desirous of restoring the old intimacy and yet ... somehow or other the
wound remained. He couldn't forget that evening on the ninth green.
Why wouldn't Freda see the point of these things? Why wouldn't she
walk? She was strong enough now for a mile or two. Almost he was
angry with her for having been ill, for it is an odd feature of
humanity that we sometimes dislike people for their sufferings, hate
them for a cough or sniff. And now Martin was on the point of blaming
Freda for the weakness he had once adored. Why wasn't she strong like
Margaret or Viola? Why didn't she understand about the moor and
wind-swept spaces and the miracle of hitting a golf-ball?
While he was bearing the olive branch these questions, dreaded and
strongly combated, kept forcing themselves into the narrow passes of
his mind as the Persian host flooded into Thermopylae. It was futile
to feign deafness: in time they would force a hearing. And there were
other less easily worded doubts and apprehensions.
Perhaps the summer-time came as a release. More than he would have
cared to admit, Martin wanted to be alone, to see Freda
dispassionately, from a distance. And so to Oxford.
Freda, while undergoing all unconsciously this dispassionate
appreciation, retired to London. But within a few weeks' time she had
received another invitation to Devonshire, and tired not so much of
town as of her relations she gladly accepted.
At The Steading were a Mr and Mrs Brodrick with their daughter. Arthur
Brodrick had been contemporary with John Berrisford at Oxford and had
passed high into the Indian Civil Service. Just before his time for a
pension was due he had been invalided home and had missed the full
reward of his service. The Brodricks lived at Sutton in a remote
mediocrity of wealth more galling than actual poverty.
Was it Chance again, the Chance that had brought a perfect Easter and
put Martin on his game, that now seemed to keep the conversation on
Oriental diseases and the rigours of imperial service? Certainly Freda
heard more of fever in distant stations than of health and company at
Simla. But the Brodricks had not been divorced from patriotism by the
hardness of their lot: they still believed in the flag, in the pomp and
state of the British Raj, in stately dinners at Government House where
the couples went down to the feast in order of social precedence, and
they recounted squabbles, petty but bitter antagonisms, of rival ladies
who considered themselves insulted by their positions in the troop of
diners.
Freda listened silently and learned.
So this was the life for which she had bargained. Eternal fever--so
they implied--eternal society of the Brodricks and their kind! For
Martin with his work to love and his career to think about such things
might be well enough! But for her! How could she blend with this
unknown, this unparalleled society?
Then the Berrisfords suggested that they should all go to Oxford for
Eights Week. Mr and Mrs Berrisford had to be in town: would Mary
Brodrick come? And, naturally, Freda? Both the girls accepted
eagerly. It was soon settled and rooms were engaged at the Mitre.
On reading the letter announcing their plans Martin groaned in the
spirit. It wasn't, of course it wasn't, that he did not want to see
Freda. Did he not write to her as eagerly as ever? Did she not
answer? But Eights Week of all times!
Martin was sufficiently a lover of Oxford, summery Oxford of the still
water-ways, to loathe and despise Eights Week, that Whitsuntide holiday
of the wealthy, when the city is invaded by a host of rich trippers,
whose tripping has not even the justification of beer-bottles and
hearty bestiality. He did not wish to eat salmon mayonnaise, to drink
champagne cup, to propel, in faultless flannels, a punt among a solid
mass of punts, to go for picnics where all London was revelling. His
choice would have been to launch a vessel on the upper river, to find
some tranquil backwater past Eynsham, with a canopy of willow and the
scene of flowering meadows; or else to make use of deserted tennis
courts and to enjoy things properly. Now they were going to break in
upon him: and indeed another idle vacation had left him work enough to
do. They had not come when he was a fresher and such things were
allowable, and the Berrisfords knew Oxford well. Presumably they
desired to show Freda the city and its ways. But why, oh why, in
Eights Week? It wasn't like the Berrisfords.
They arrived duly and lived in state at the Mitre: they mingled with
the crowds, tramped the colleges, and demanded to have things pointed
out to them. Mary Brodrick said all the right things. Martin
shuddered as the phrases came out in turn:
"Can we see the kitchens?" (at Christ Church).
"Where are the Prince's rooms?" (at Magdalen).
"Isn't this the clever college?" (at Balliol).
It was a gloomy ceremony.
There was Freda. And she ... well, he had to admit that she didn't
harmonise with this world of fine raiment and expensive bean-feasts.
The Freda who glittered in the punt, the Freda clothed sumptuously at
her uncle's expense was undeniably different from the insignificant
wisp of a girl in plain blue coat and skirt who had hurried out of the
office at six and come to Martin for rest and comfort. To have
explained his feelings accurately would have been an impossible task
for Martin, but he could not put aside a vague sensation that Freda was
wrongly placed in this world, that she was pre-eminently a martyr and a
rebel, not a woman of leisure.
She did not even know what to say. There is a particular kind of
speech appropriate to these occasions: it is neither flirtation nor
conversation in the proper sense, but a discreet blend, a mixture as
insipid as it is inevitable. It does not demand brains or wit, but a
certain quality, a training. Mary Brodrick, with all her limitations,
knew the game; she was jolly and made things go. Freda hung back or,
when she came forward, made mistakes. Odd that Martin should have been
angry with Freda for her inability to play a game which he himself
despised. Yet it did pain him that she didn't "fit in."
As a strange word whose meaning has recently been discovered seems to
the reader to occur on every page he reads, so Freda suddenly revealed
to Martin in a hundred ways her incapacity for "fitting in." And it
was to the society of countless Brodricks that Martin would have to
take her.
On the Wednesday evening, when the river was rendered invisible by the
press of vessels and fair women, when the supporters of the victorious
college swam across the river and dived from barge and boathouse, when
supper-parties began to disappear up the Cherwell and gramophones to
tinkle in shady recesses, Mary Brodrick caught her train to town, Mr
and Mrs Berrisford went to see the Irish Players, and Martin took Freda
on the river.
To avoid the crowd they were going to the Cherwell above the rollers.
She kept him waiting in the taxi that was to take them to Tims'.
At Tims' she found the punt dirty, said the cushions were filthy, and
would ruin her dress.
"Eights Week," said Martin. "We've got to be thankful to get any kind
of a punt."
Still she grumbled. Martin ran into a projecting bush and, before she
knew what had occurred, her hat had been pushed over her eyes, her hair
disarranged, and her face scratched. She said nothing at all. Worse
than any expostulation! It grew cold and a chilly breeze sprang up.