by E. F. Benson
CHAPTER VI
Edith Arbuthnot had conceived the idea, an unhappy one as regards herfamily and neighbors, that every one who aspired to the name of Musician(it is not too much to assert that she did) should be able to play everyinstrument in the band. Just now she was learning the French horn anddouble-bass simultaneously. She kept her mind undistracted by thehideous noises she produced, and expected others to do so. Thus unlessshe was practising some instrument that required the exclusive use ofthe mouth, she would talk (and did so) while she learned.
Just now she was seated on the terrace wall at Winston, which was of aconvenient height for playing the double-bass, which rested on theterrace below, and conversing at the top of her voice to Dodo who sat ayard or two away. These stentorian tones of course were necessary inorder that she should be heard above the vibrating roar of theill-played strings. She could not at present get much tone out of them;but for volume, it was as if all the bumblebees in the world wereswarming in all the threshing-machines in the world, which werethreshing everything else in the world.
"I used to think you were heartless, Dodo," she shouted; "but comparedto Nadine you are a sickly sentimentalist."
When Dodo did not feel equal to shouting back, she spoke in dumb show.Now she concisely indicated "Rot" on her fingers.
"It isn't Rot," shouted Edith; "ah, what a wonderful thing a double-bassis: I shall write a Suite for the double-bass unaccompanied--I reallymean it. If you seemed to me without a heart, Nadine would seem to havean organ which is all that a heart is not, very highly developed.Probably she inherited a tendency from you, and has developed andcultivated it. What do you say?"
"I said, do stop that appalling noise, darling," screamed Dodo. "I shallburst a blood-vessel if I try to talk against it."
"Very well: I must just play two or three scales," said Edith.
The hoarse clamor grew more and more vibrant and Dodo stopped her ears.Eventually the bow, as Edith brought it down upon the first note of anew scale, flew from her hands, and describing a parabola in the airfell into a clump of sweet-peas in the flower-bed below the terrace.
"I must learn not to do that," she said. "It happened yesterday and Ishan't consider myself proficient until I am safe not to hit theconductor in the face. About Nadine: She is going to perpetrate the mosthorrible cruelty, marrying that dreadful young man, while Hugh is justdying for her. Hugh reminds me of what Jack was like, Dodo."
"Oh, do you think so?" said Dodo. "Except that Jack was oncetwenty-five, which is what Hugh is now, I don't see the smallestresemblance. Jack was so good-looking, and Hugh only looks good, andthough Hugh is a darling, he is just a little slow and heavy, which Jacknever was. You will be able to compare them, by the way, because Hugh iscoming here this afternoon. I asked him not to, but he is coming justthe same. I told him Nadine and Seymour were both here."
"Perhaps he means to kill Seymour," said Edith thoughtfully. "Itcertainly would be the obvious thing to do--"
"Hughie would always do the obvious thing," said Dodo.
"I will finish my sentence," said Edith. "It certainly would be theobvious thing to do, provided that the public executioner would not hanghim, and that Nadine would marry him. But things would probably go theother way about, which would not be so satisfactory for Hugh. Really theyoung generation is very bloodless: it talks more than we did, but itdoes absolutely nothing."
"We used to talk a good deal," remarked Dodo, "and we are not silentyet. At least you and I are not. Edith, has it ever struck you that youand I are middle-aged? Or is middle-age, do you think, not a matter ofyears, but of inclination? I think it must be, for it is simply foolishto say that I am forty-five, though it would be simply untrue to saythat I was anything else. That is by the way; we will talk of ourselvessoon. Where had I got to? Oh, yes, Hugh is coming down this afternoonthough I implored him not to. Nadine says I was wrong. She wants me tobe very nice to him, as she has been so horrid. They have not seen eachother for a whole week, ever since her engagement was announced. I amsure Nadine misses him; she will be miserable if Hugh deserts her."
Edith plucked impatiently at the strings of the double-bass, and arousedthe bumblebees again.
"That's what I mean by bloodless," she said. "They are all sufferingfrom anemia together. Their blood has turned to a not very high qualityof gray matter in the brain. Nadine wants you to be kind to Hugh,because she has been so horrid! Dodo, don't you see how fishlike thatis? And he, since he can't marry her, takes the post of_valet-de-chambre_, and looks on while Seymour gives her littlebutterfly kisses and small fragments of jade. I saw him kiss heryesterday, Dodo. It made me feel quite faint and weak, and I had tohurry into the dining-room and take half a glass of port. It was themost debilitated thing I ever saw. Berts is nearly as bad, and though heis nine feet high and plays cricket for his county, he is somehowladylike. I can't think where he got it from: certainly not from me. Andas for Hugh, I suppose he calls it faithfulness to hang about afterNadine, but I call it anemia. I am surprised at Hugh; I should havethought he was sufficiently stupid to have more blood in him. He oughtto box Nadine's ears, kick Seymour and instantly marry somebody else,and have dozens of great red-faced, white-toothed children. Bah!"
Dodo had subsided into hopeless giggles over this remarkable tiradeagainst the anemic generation and Edith plucked at her double-bass againas she concluded with this exclamation of scorn.
"And I can't think how you allow Nadine to marry that--that jade," saidEdith.
Dodo became momentarily serious.
"If you were Nadine's mother," she said, "you would be delighted at hermarrying anybody. She is the sort of girl who doesn't want to marry, andafterwards wishes she had. I am not like that: I was continuallymarrying somebody and then wishing I hadn't. But Nadine doesn't makemistakes. She may do things that appear very odd, but they are notmistakes, she has thought it out very carefully first. You see, quite aquantity of eligible youths and several remarkably ineligible ones havewanted to marry her, and she has never felt any--dear me, what is it aman with a small income always feels when a post with a large income isoffered him--oh, yes, a call: Nadine has never felt any call to marryany of them. There are many girls like that in whom the physical makesvery little appeal. But what does appeal to Nadine very strongly is themental, and Seymour however many times you call him a jade, is as cleveras he can be. In him, also, I should say, the physical side is extremelyundeveloped, and so I think that he and Nadine may be very happy. NowHugh is not clever at all; he has practically no intellect and that toNadine is an insuperable defect. Now don't call her prig or bluestocking. She is neither the one nor the other. But she has a mind. Sohave you. So for that matter have I, and it has led me to do weirdthings."
Edith thrummed her double-bass again.
"Dodo, I can't tell you how I disapprove of you," she said, "and how Ilove you. You are almost entirely selfish, and yet you have charm. Mostutterly selfish people lose their charm when they are about thirty. Imade sure you would. But I was quite wrong. Now I am utterly unselfish:I live entirely for my husband and my art. I live for him by seldomgoing near him, since he is much happier alone. But then I never had anycharm at all. Now you have always lived, and do still, completely foryour own pleasure--"
Dodo clapped her hands violently in Edith's face for it required drasticmeasures to succeed in interrupting her.
"Ah, that is an astonishingly foolish thing for you to say," she said."If I lived for my pleasure, do you know what I should do? I should havea hot bath, go to bed and have dinner there. I should then go to sleepand when I woke up I should go for a ride, have another hot bath andanother dinner and go to sleep again. There is nothing so pleasant asriding and hot baths and food and sleep. But I never have sought mypleasure. What I always have sought is my happiness. And that on thewhole is our highest duty. Don't swear. There is nothing selfish aboutit, if you are made like I am. Because the thing that above all othersmakes me happy is to contrive that other people should have their ownway.
That is why I never dream of interfering in what other people want.If they really want it, I do all I can to get it for them. I was notever thus, as the hymn says, but I am so now. The longer I live the moreclearly I see that it is impossible to understand why other people wantwhat they want, but it seems to me that all that concerns me is thatthey do want. I can see how they want, but never why. I can't think,darling, for instance, why you want to make those excruciating noises,but I see how. Here's Jack. Jack, come and tell us about Utopia."
Edith had laid her double-bass down on the ground of the terrace.
"Yes, but I want to sit down," he said. "May I sit on it, Edith?"
Edith screamed. He took this as a sign that he might not, and sat on theterrace wall.
"Utopia?" he asked. "You've got to be a man to begin with and then youhave to marry Dodo. It does the rest."
"What is It?"
"That which does it, your consciousness. Dodo, it would send up rents inUtopia if Seymour went to a nice girls' school. He is rather silly, andwants the nonsense knocked out of him."
"But there you make a mistake," said she. "Almost every one who is niceis nice because the nonsense has not been knocked out of him. Peoplewithout heaps of nonsense are merely prigs. Indeed that is the bestdefinition of a prig, one who has lost his capability for nonsense. Lookat Edith! She doesn't know she's nonsensical, but she is. And she thinksshe is serious all the time with her great boots and her greatdouble-bass and her French horns. Oh me, oh me! The reasonable people inthe world are the ruin of it; they spoil the sunshine. Look at theabominable Liberal party with terrible, reasonable schemes forscullery-maids. They are all quite excellent, and it is for that reasonthey are so hopeless.
"It is moreover a great liberty to take with people to go aboutameliorating them. I should be furious if anybody wanted to ameliorateme. Darling, Bishop Algie the other day said he always prayed for myhighest good. I begged him not to, because if his prayers were answered,Providence might think I should be better for a touch of typhoid. Youcan't tell what strange roundabout ways Providence may have. So hepromised to stop praying for me, because he is so understanding and knewwhat I meant. But when Lloyd George wants to give scullery-maids a happyold age with a canary in the window it is even worse. It is so sensible:I can see them sitting dismally in the room listening to their canary,when they would be much more comfortable in a nice work-house, withEdith and me bringing them packets of tea and flannel. Don't let us talkpolitics: there is nothing that saps the intellect so much."
"Edith and I have not talked much yet," observed Jack.
"No, you are listening to Utopia, which as I said, consists largely ofnonsense. If you are to be happy, you must play, you must be ridiculous,you must want everybody else to be ridiculous. But everybody must takehis own absurdities quite seriously."
Dodo sat up, pulled Jack's cigarette case from his pocket and helpedherself.
"The Greeks and Romans were so right," she said, "they had a slaveclass, though with them it was an involuntary slave class. We ought tohave a voluntary slave class, consisting of all the people who likeworking for a cause. There are heaps of politicians who naturally belongto it, and clergymen and lawyers and nationalists, all the people infact who die when they retire, and are disappointed when they have notgot offices and churches to go to. You can recognize a slave the momentyou see him. He always, socially, wants to open the door or shut thewindow, or pick up your gloves. The moment you see that look in a man'seye, that sort of itch to be useful, you should be able to give secretinformation and make him a slave at L200 a year, instead of making him acabinet minister or a bishop or a director of a company. He wants work:let him have it. Edith, darling, you would be a slave instantly, and theState would provide you with double-basses and cornets. I haven'tthought it all completely out, since it only occurred to me this minute,but it seems to me an almost painfully sound scheme now that I mentionit. Think of the financiers you would get! There would be poor Mr.Carnegie and Rockefeller and--and the whole of the Rothschild house,and Barings and Speyers all quite happy, because they are happy whenthey work. And all the millions they make--how they make it, I don'tknow, unless they buy gold cheap and sell it dear, which I believe isreally what they do--all the money they make would be at the disposal ofthose who know how to spend it. I suppose I am a Socialist."
Edith put her forehead in her hands.
"I don't know what you are talking about," she said.
"I have my doubts myself," said Dodo ingenuously. "It began aboutNadine's marriage and then drifted. You get to all sorts of strangeplaces if you drift, both morally and physically. It really seems veryunfair, that if you don't ever resist anything, you go to the bad. Itlooks as if evil was stronger than good, but Algie shall explain it tome. He can explain almost anything, including wasps. Jack, dear, do makeme stop talking; you and the sunshine and Edith have gone to my head,and given me the babbles."
"I insist on your going on talking," said Edith. "I want to know how youcan let Nadine marry without love."
"Because a great many of our unfortunate sex, dear, never fall in love,as I mean it, at all. But I would not have them not marry. They oftenmake excellent wives and mothers. And I think Nadine is one of those.She is as nearly in love with Hugh as she has ever been with anybody,but she quite certainly will not marry him. Here she is; I daresay shewill explain it all herself. My darling, come and talk matrimony shop toEdith, Jack and I are going for a short ride before lunch. Will you bein when Hugh comes?"
Nadine sat down in the chair from which Dodo had risen. She was dressedin a very simple linen dress of cornflower blue, that made the whitesand pinks of her face look absolutely dazzling.
"Yes, I will wait for him," she said. "Seymour thought it would bekinder if he went to meet him at the station, so that Hughie could getrid of some of the hate on the way up. He has perception--_des apercustres-fins_. And I will explain anything to anybody in the interval. Iwant to be married, and so does Seymour, and we think it will answeradmirably if we marry each other. There is very little else to say. Weare not foolish about each other--"
"I find you are extremely modern," interrupted Edith.
"You speak as if you did not like that," said Nadine; "but surelysomebody has got to be modern if we are going to get on at all.Otherwise the world remains stock-still, or goes back. I do not think itwould be amusing to be Victorian again; indeed there would be no use inus trying. We should be such obvious forgeries, Seymour particularly. Iconsider it lucky that he was not born earlier; if he had grown up as heis in Victorian days, they would certainly have done away with himsomehow. Or his mother would have exposed him in Battersea Park likeOEdipus."
Edith leaned over the terrace wall, and took the double-bass bow out ofthe tall clump of sweet peas.
"There are exactly two things in the world worth doing," she said, "tolove and to work. Certainly you don't work, Nadine, and I don't believeyou love."
Nadine looked at her a moment in silent hostility.
"That is a very comfortable reflection," she observed, "for you who likeworking better than anything else in the world except perhaps golf. Iwonder you did not say there were three things in the world worth doing,making that damned game the third."
Edith had spoken with her usual cock-sure breezy enthusiasm, and lookedup surprised at a certain venom and bitterness that underlay the girl'sreply.
"My dear Nadine!" she said. "What is the matter?"
Nadine glared at her a moment, and then broke into rapid speech.
"Do you think I would not give the world to be able to love?" she said."Do you think I send Hugh marching through hell for fun? You say I amheartless, as if it was my fault! Would you go to a blind man in thestreet and say, 'You beast, you brute, why don't you see?' Is he blindfor fun? Am I like this for fun?"
She got up from her seat and came and stood in front of Edith, flushedwith an unusual color, and continued more rapidly yet, emphasizing herpoints by admirable gesticulations of her hands. Ind
eed they seemed tohave speech on their own account: they were extraordinarily eloquent.
"Do you know you make me lose my temper?" she said. "That is a rarething with me; I seldom lose it; but when I do it is quite gone, and Idon't care what I say, so long as it is what I mean. For the minute mytemper is absolutely vanished, and I shall make the most of its absence.Who are you to judge and condemn me? and give me rules for conduct, howwork and love are the only things worth doing? What do you know aboutme? Either you are absolutely ignorant about me, or so stupid that thevery cabbages seem clever by you. And you go telling me what to do! Andwhat do you know about love? To look at you, as little as you know aboutme. Yes; no wonder you sit there with your mouth open staring at me, youand your foolish, great fat-bellied bloated violin. You are notaccustomed to be spoken to like this. It never occurred to you that Iwould give the world to be able to love as Jill and Polly and Mary andMinnie love. I do not go about saying that any more than a cripple callsattention to his defect: he tries to be brave and conceal it. But thatis me, a dwarf, a hunchback, a _cretin_ of the soul. That is the matterwith me, and you are so foolish that it never occurred to you that Iwanted to be like other people. You thought it was a pose of which I wasproud, I think. There! Now do not do that again."
Nadine paused, and then sighed.
"I feel better," she said, "but quite red in the face. However, I havegot my temper back again. If you like I will apologize for losing it."
Edith jumped up and kissed Nadine. When she intended to kiss anybodyshe did it, whether the victim liked it or not.
"My dear, you are quite delightful," she said. "I thoroughly deserveevery word. I was utterly ignorant of you. But I am not stupid: if youwill go on, you will find I shall understand."
Suddenly Nadine felt utterly lonely. All she had said of herself in hersudden exasperation was perfectly genuine, and now when her equanimityreturned, she felt as if she must tell somebody about this isolation,which for the moment, in any case, was sincerely and deeply hers. Thatshe was a girl of a hundred moods was quite true, but it was equallytrue that each mood was authentically inspired from within. Many ofthem, no doubt, were far from edifying, but none could be found guiltyof the threadbare tawdriness of pose. She nodded at Edith.
"It is as I say," she said. "I hate myself, but here I am, and here soonwill Hugh be. It is a disease, this heartlessness: I suffer from it. Itis rather common too, but commoner among girls than boys."
Then queerly and unexpectedly, but still honestly, her intellectualinterest in herself, that cold egoism that was characteristic of anotherside of her, awoke.
"Yet it is interesting," she said, "because it is out of this sort ofderangement that types and species come. For a million years the fish wecall the sole had a headache because one of its eyes was slowlytraveling through its head. For a million years man was uncomfortablewhere the tail once came, because it was drying up. For a million yearsthere will be girls like me, poor wretches, and at the end there willbe another type of woman, a third sex, perhaps, who from not caringabout these things which Nature evidently meant them to care about havebecome different. And all the boys like Seymour will be approximating tothe same type from the other side, so that eventually we shall be likethe angels--"
"My dear, why angels?" asked Edith.
"Neither marrying nor giving in marriage. La, la! And I was saying onlythe other day to him that I wished to marry half-a-dozen men! What agood thing that one does not feel the same every day. It would beatrociously dull. But in the interval, it is lonely now and then forthose of us who are not exactly and precisely of the normal type ofgirl. But if you have no heart, you have to follow your intelligence, togo where your intelligence leads you, and then wave a flag. Perhapsnobody sees it, or only the wrong sort of person, who says, 'What isthat idiot-girl waving that rag for?' But she only waves it because sheis lost, and hopes that somebody will see it."
Nadine laughed with her habitual gurgle.
"We are all lost," she said. "But we want to be found. It is only thestupidest who do not know they are lost. Well, I have--what is Hugh'sword? ah, yes,--I have gassed enough for one morning. Ah, and there isthe motor coming back from the station. I am glad that Hugh has notthrown Seymour out, and driven forwards and backwards over him."
The motor at this moment was passing not more than a couple of hundredyards off through the park which lay at the foot of the steep gardenterraces below them. From there the road wound round in a long looptowards the house.
"I shall go to meet Hugh at once, and get it over," said Nadine; andthereupon she whistled so shrilly and surprisingly on her fingers, thatHugh, who was driving, looked up and saw her over the terrace. She madestaccato wavings to him, and he got out.
"You whistled the octave of B. in alt," remarked Edith appreciatively.
"And my courage is somewhere about the octave of B. in profundis," saidNadine. "I dread what Hugh may say to me."
"I will go and talk to him," said Edith. "I understand you now, Nadine.I will tell him."
Nadine smiled very faintly.
"That is sweet of you," she said, "but I am afraid it wouldn't be quitethe same thing."
* * * * *
Nadine walked down the steep flight of steps in the middle of theterrace, and out through the Venetian gate into the park. Hugh had justarrived at it from the other side, and they met there. No word ofgreeting passed between them; they but stood looking at each other. Hesaw the girl he loved, neither more nor less than that, and did not knowif she looked well or ill, or if her gown was blue or pink or rainbowed.To him it was Nadine who stood there. But she saw details, not beingblinded: he was big and square, he looked a picture of health,brown-eyed, clear of skin, large-mouthed, with a habit of smilingwritten strongly there. He had taken off his hat, as was usual with him,and as usual his hair looked a little disordered, as if he had been outon a windy morning. There was that slight thrusting outwards of his chinwhich suggested that he would meet argument with obstinacy, but thatkind and level look from his eyes that suggested an honesty andkindliness hardly met with outside the charming group of living beingsknown as dogs. He was like a big, kind dog, polite to strangers, kind tofriends, hopelessly devoted to the owner of his soul. But to-day hismouth did not indulge its habit: he was quite grave.
"Why did you kiss me the other night?" he said.
Nadine had already repented of that rash act. Being conscious of her ownrepentance, it seemed to her rather nagging of him to allude to it.
"I meant nothing," she said. "Hughie, are we going to stand like postshere? Shan't we stroll--"
"I don't see why: let us stand like posts. You did kiss me. Or do youkiss everybody?"
Nadine considered this for a moment.
"No, I don't kiss everybody," she said. "I never kissed a man before. Itwas stupid of me. The moment after I had done it I wanted to kiss_anybody_ to show you it didn't mean anything. You are like theInquisition. My next answer is that I have kissed Seymour since. I--Idon't particularly like kissing him. But it is usual."
"And you are going to marry him?"
Nadine's courage which she had confessed was a B. in profundis, sankinto profundissima.
"Yes, I am going to marry him," she said.
"Why? You don't love him. And he doesn't love you."
"I don't love anybody," said Nadine quickly. "I have said that so oftenthat I am tired of saying it. Girls often marry without being in love.It just happens. What do you want? Would you like me to go onspinstering just because I won't marry you? That I will not do. You knowwhy. You love me. I can't marry you unless I love you. Ah, _mon Dieu_,it sounds like Ollendorf. But I should be cheating you if I married you,and I will not cheat you. You would expect from me what you bring to me,and it would be right that I should bring it you, and I cannot. If youdidn't love me like that, I would marry you to-morrow, and the trousseaumight go and hang itself. Mama would give me some blouses and stockings,and you would buy me a tooth-brush.
Yes, this is very flippant, but whenserious people are goaded they become flippant. Oh, Hughie, I wish I wasdifferent. But I am not different. And what is it you came down hereabout? Is it to ask me again to marry you, and to ask me not to marry mydear little Seymour?"
"Little?" he asked.
"It was a term of endearment. Besides, it is not his fault that he doesnot weigh fourteen stones--"
"Stone," said he with the tremor of a smile.
"No, stones," said Nadine. "I choose that it should be stones: fourteengreat square lumps. Hughie, don't catch my words up and correct me. I amserious and all you can answer is 'stone' instead of 'stones.'"
"I did it without thinking," he said. "I only fell back into the sort ofspeech there used to be between us. It was like that, serious one momentand silly the next. I spoke without thinking, as we used to speak. Iwon't do it again."
"And why not?" demanded Nadine.
"Because now that you tell me you really are going to marry Seymour,everything is changed between us. This is what I came to tell you. I amnot going to hang about, a mixture between a valet and an _ami de lamaison_. You have chosen now. When you refused me before, there wasalways in my mind the hope that some day you would give me a differentanswer. I waited long and patiently and willingly for that chance. Nowthe chance no longer exists. You have scratched me--"
Nadine drew her eyebrows together.
"Scratched you?" she said. "Oh, I see, a race: not nails."
"And I am definitely and finally out of it."
"You mean you are no longer among my friends?" asked Nadine.
"I shall not be with you so much or so intimately. We must talk over itjust this once. We will stroll if you like. It is too hot for youstanding in the sun without a hat."
"No, we will settle it here and now," said she quickly. "You don'tunderstand. My marriage with Seymour will make no difference in thequality of affection I have always had for you. Why should I give up mybest friend? Why should you?"
"Because you are much more than my best friend, and I am obliged to giveup, at last, that idea of you. You have forced me to see that it is notto be realized. And I won't sit about your house, to have peoplepointing at me, and saying to each other, 'That's the one who is sofrightfully in love with her.' It may sound priggish, but I don't chooseto be quite so unmanly as that. Nor would you much respect me if I didso choose."
"But I never did respect you," said Nadine quickly. "I never thought ofyou as respectable or otherwise. It doesn't come in. You may steal andcheat at cards, and I shall not care. I like whom I like: I like youtremendously. What do you mean you are going to do? Go to Burmah orBengal? I don't want to lose you, Hughie. It is unkind of you. Besides,we shall not marry for a long time yet, and even then-- Ah, it is theold tale, the old horror called Me all over again--I don't love anybody.Many are delightful and I am so fond of them. But the other, theabsorption, the gorgeous foolishness of it all, it is away outside ofme, a fairy-tale and I am grown up now and say, 'For me it is nottrue.'"
Hugh came a step nearer her.
"You poor devil," he said gently.
Tears, as yet unshed, gathered in Nadine's eyes. They were fairlycreditable tears: they were not at any rate like the weepings of thegreat prig-prince and compounded merely of "languor and self-pity," butsorrow for Hugh was one ingredient in them. Yet in the main they werefor herself, since the only solvent for egoism is love.
"Yes, I am that," she said. "I'm a poor devil. I'm lost, as I said tothat foolish Arbuthnot woman with her feet and great violin. Hark, sheis playing it again: she is a big 'C major'! She has been scolding me,though if it comes to that I gave it her back with far more _gamin_ inmy tongue. And now you say you will not be friends any longer, and Mamadoes not like my marrying Seymour, though she does not argue, and thereis no one left but myself, and I hate myself. Oh, I am lost, and I wavemy flags and there is no one who sees or understands. I shall go back toDaddy, I think, and he and I will drink ourselves drunk, and I shallhave the red nose. But you are the worst of them all, Hugh! It is a verystrange sort of love you have for me, if all it can do is to desert me.And yet the other day I felt as you feel; I felt it would only be fairto you to see you less. I am a damned weathercock. I go this way andthat, but the wind is always cold. I am sorry for you, I want you to behappy, I would make you happy myself, if I could."
Nadine's eyes had quite overflowed, and as she poured out thisremarkable series of lamentations, she dabbed at her moistened cheeks.Yet Hugh, though he was so largely to blame, as it seemed, for thisemotion, and though all the most natural instincts in him longed toyield, knew that deep in him his determination was absolutelyunsoftened. It, and his love for Nadine were of the quality of nethermill-stones. But all the rest of him longed to comfort her.
"Oh, Nadine, don't cry," he said. "I'm not worth crying about, to beginwith."
"It is not you alone I cry about," said Nadine with justice. "I cry alittle for you, every third drop is for you. The rest is quite formyself."
"It is never worth while to cry for oneself," he said.
"Who wants it to be worth while? I feel like crying, therefore I cry.Hardly anything I do is worth while, yet I go on doing, and I get tiredof it before it is done. Already I am tired of crying, and besides itgives me the red nose without going to Daddy. Not you and I together areworth making myself ugly for. But you are so disagreeable, Hughie: firstI wanted to stroll, and you said 'no,' and then when I didn't want tostroll you said 'yes,' and you aren't going to be friends with me, and Ifeel exactly as I used to feel when I was six years old, and it rained.Come, let us sit down a little, and you shall tell me what you mean todo, and how it will be between us. I will be very good: I will bless anyplan you make, like a bishop. It shall all be as you will. I owe you somuch and there is no way by which I can ever repay you. I don't want tobe a curse to you, Hughie; I don't indeed."
She sat down, leaning against a great beech trunk, and he lay on thecoarse meadow-grass beside her.
"I know you don't," he said.
He looked at her steadily, as she finished mopping her cheeks. Herlittle burst of tears had not made her nose at all red; it had but givena softness to her eyes. Never before had he so strongly felt herwayward, irresistible charm, which it was so impossible to analyse orexplain. Indeed, if it came to analysis there were strange ingredientsthere; there was egoism as complete, and yet as disarming, as that of aPersian kitten; there was the unreasonableness of a spoilt child; therewas the inconsiderateness and unreliability of an April day, whichalternates its gleams of the saffron sun of spring with cold rain andplumping showers.
Yet he felt that there was something utterly adorable, wholly womanlythat lay sheathed in these more superficial imperfections, somethingthat stirred within them conscious of the coming summer, just as thelife embalmed within the chrysalis stirs, giving token of the time whenthe husk shall burst, and that which was but a gray crawling thing shallbe wafted on wings of silver emblazoned with scarlet and gold. Thenthere was her beauty too, which drew his eyes after the wonder of itsperfection, and was worthy of the soul that he divined in her. Andfinally (and this perhaps to him was the supreme magnet) there was theamazing and superb quality of her vitality, that sparkled andeffervesced in all she did and said, so that for him her speech was likesong or light, and to be with her was to be bathed in the effulgence ofher spirit. And Hugh, looking at her now, felt, as always, that his selfslipped from him, so that he was conscious of her only; she possessedhim, and he lay like the sea with the dazzle of sunlight on it that bothreflects the radiance and absorbs it.
Then he sat up: and half turned from her, for there were things to besaid yet that he could scarcely say while he looked at her.
"I know you don't mean to be a curse to me," he said, "and you couldn'tbe if you tried. Whatever you did, and you are going to do a pretty badthing now in marrying that chap, must be almost insignificant comparedto the love which you have made exist in me."
He paused a moment.
She was watching him and listening to him, with a curious intentness andnervousness, as a prisoner about to receive sentence may watch thejudge. Her hands clasped and unclasped themselves, her breath came shortand irregular. It seemed as if she, for once, had failed to understandhim whom she had said she knew too fatally well. Just now, at any rate,and on this topic, it was clear she did not know what he was going topropose. Yet it was scarcely a proposal she waited for; she waited forhis word, his ultimatum. Till now she had dominated him completely withher quick wit, her far more subtle intelligence, her beauty, hervitality. But for once now, he was her master: she felt she had to bowto his simplicity and his uncomplicated strength, his brute virility. Itwas but faintly that she recognized it; the recognition came to herconsciousness but as an echo. But the voice that made the echo came fromwithin.
"I have received my dismissal from you," he said, "as head of yourhouse, as your possible husband. As I said, I won't take the place ofthe tame cat instead. God knows I don't want to cut adrift from you, andI can't cut adrift from you. But my aspiration is rendered impossible,and therefore both my mental attitude to you and my conduct must bealtered. I daresay Berts and Tommy and Esther and all the rest of themwill go lying about on your bed, and smoking in your bedroom just asbefore. Well, I can't be intimate in that sort of way any longer. Yousaid you never reckoned whether you respected me or not, and that may beso. But without wanting to be heavy about it, I have got to respectmyself. I can't help being your lover, but I can help tickling my love,so to speak, making it squirm and wriggle. Whether I am respectable ornot, it is, and I shan't--as I said--I shan't tickle it. Also though Iwould be hurt in any other way for your sake, I won't be hurt like that.Don't misunderstand me. It is because my love for you is not one atomabated, that I won't play tricks with it. But when it says to me, 'Ican't bear it,' I shall not ask to bear it. You always found me tooeasy to understand: I think this is another instance of it."
He paused a moment and Nadine gave a little sobbing sigh.
"Oh, Hughie," she began.
"No, don't interrupt," he said. "I want to go through with it, withoutdiscussion. There is no discussion possible. I wouldn't argue with Godabout it. I should say: 'You made me an ordinary human man, and you'vegot to take the consequences. In the same way, you have chosen Seymour,and I am telling you what is the effect. Now--you are tired of hearingit--I love you. And therefore I want your happiness without reservation.You have decided it will conduce to your happiness to marry Seymour.Therefore, Nadine--this is quite simple and true--I want you to do so. Imay rage and storm on the surface, but essentially I don't. Somewherebehind all I may say and do, there is, as you once said to me, theessential me. Well, that says to you, 'God bless you.' That's all."
He unclasped his hands from round his knees, and stood up.
"I'm going away now," he said. "I thought when I came down it might takea long time to tell you this. But it has taken ten minutes only. Ithought perhaps you would have a lot to say about it, and I daresay youhave, but I find that it doesn't concern me. Don't think me brutal, anymore than I think you brutal. I am made like this, and you are madeotherwise. By all means, let us see each other, often I hope, but notjust yet. I've got to adjust myself, you see, and you haven't. You neverloved me, and so what you have done makes no difference in your feelingstowards me. But I've got to get used to it."
She looked up at him, as he stood there in front of her with the greenlights through the beech-leaves playing on him.
"You make me utterly miserable, Hugh," she said.
"No, I don't. There is no such thing as misery without love. You don'tcare for me in the way that you could--could give you the privilege ofbeing miserable."
For one half-second she did not follow him. But immediately thequickness of her mind grasped what came so easily and simply to him.
"Ah, I see," she said, her intelligence leading her away from him by thelure of the pleasure of perception. "When you are like that, it is evena joy to be miserable. Is that so?"
"Yes, I suppose that is it. Your misery is a--a wireless message fromyour love. Bad news, perhaps, but still a communication."
She got up.
"Ah, my dear," she said, "that must be so. I never thought of it. But Ican infer that you are right. Somehow you are quickened, Hughie. You aregiving me a series of little shocks. You were never quite like thatbefore."
"I was always exactly like that," he said. "I have told you nothing thatI have not always known."
Again her brilliant egoism asserted itself.
"Then it is I who am quickened," she said. "There is nothing thatquickens me so much as being hurt. It makes all your nerves awake andactive. Yes; you have hurt me, and you are not sorry. I do not mindbeing hurt, if it makes me more alive. Ah, the only point of life is tobe alive. If life was a crown of thorns, how closely I would press itround my head, so that the points wounded and wounded me. It is soshallow just to desire to be happy. I do not care whether I am happy ornot, so long as I feel. Give me all the cancers and consumptions anddecayed teeth, and gout and indigestion and necrosis of the spine andliver if there is such a thing, so that I may feel. I _don't_ feel: itis that which ails me. I have a sane body and a sane mind, and I amtired of sanity. Kick me, Hughie, strike me, spit at me, make me angryand disgusted, anything, oh, anything! I want to feel, and I want tofeel about you most particularly, and I can't, and there is Edithplaying on her damned double-bass again. I hear it, I am conscious ofit, and it is only the things that don't matter which I am conscious of.I am conscious of your brown eyes, my dear, and your big mouth and yourtrousers and boots, and the cow that is wagging its tail and looking atus as if it was going to be sick. Its dinner, I remember, goes into itsstomach, and then comes up again, and then it becomes milk or a calf orsomething. It has nine stomachs, or is it a cat that has nine lives, ornine tails? I am sure about nine. Oh, Hughie, I see the outside aspectof things, and I can't get below. I am a flat stone that you send tomake--chickens is it?--no, ducks and drakes over a pond: flop, flop, thefoolish thing. And somehow you with your stupidity and your simplicity,you go down below, and drown, and stick in the mud, and are souncomfortable and miserable. And I am sorry for you: I hate you to beuncomfortable and miserable, and oh, I envy you. You suffer and arekind, and don't envy, and are not puffed up, and I envy your misery, andam puffed up because I am so desirable, and I don't really suffer--youare quite right--and I am not kind. Hugh, I can't bear that cow, driveit away, it will eat me and make milk of me. And there, look, are Mamaand Papa Jack, coming back from their ride. Papa Jack loves her; hisface is like a face in a spoon when he looks at her, and I know she islearning to love him. She no longer thinks when she is talking to him,as to whether he will be pleased. That is a sure sign. She is beginningto be herself, at her age too! She doesn't think about thinking abouthim any more: it comes naturally. And I am not myself: I am somethingelse: rather, I am nothing else: I am nothing at all, just someintelligence, and some flesh and blood and bones. I am not a realperson. It is that which is the matter. I long to be a real person, andI can't. I crawl sideways over other things like a crab: I wave mypincers and pinch. I am lost: I am nothing! And yet I know--how horriblyI know it--there is something behind, more than the beastly idol withthe wooden eye, which is all I know of my real self. If only I couldfind it! If only I could crack myself up like a nut and get to akernel. For God's sake, Hughie, take the nut-crackers, and crack me. Itis idle to ask you to do it. You have tried often enough. You will haveto get a stronger nut-cracker. Meantime I am a nut, just a nut, with itshard bright shell. Seymour is another nut. There we shall be."
Hugh caught her by the wrists.
"I can't stand it, Nadine," he said. "You feel nothing for him. He isnothing to you. How can you marry him? It's profane: it's blasphemous.You say you can gi
ve nothing to anybody. Well, make the best ofyourself. I can give all I am to you. Isn't that better than absolute_nil_? You can't give, but let me give. It's worship, it's all thereis--"
She stood there with her wrists in his hands, his strong fingersbruising and crushing them. She could have screamed for the pain of it.
"No, and a thousand times no," she said. "I won't cheat."
"I ask you to cheat."
"And I won't. Hughie dear, press harder, hurt me more, so that you maysee I am serious. You may bite the flesh off me, you may strangle me,and I will stand quite still and let you do it. But I won't marry you. Iwon't cheat you. My will is stronger than your body, and I would diesooner."
"Then your marriage is a pure farce," said he.
"Come and laugh at it," she said.