O, These Men, These Men!

by Angela Thirkell

  “I am very, very sorry, Anna,” said Caroline. “Poor Francis had just thoroughly upset me and I was hateful not to be more patient with him. I do love him, Anna, but because he is my cousin and I have always known him. But to be touched, to be anyone’s property again – oh, horrible, unless one loved a man quite unbearably. Forgive me, my darling. Go to bed and sleep. I won’t cry again and tomorrow it will all be forgotten. Thank heaven we go to Beechwood for Christmas. There one can breathe and be oneself again and walk on the hills. Good night, Anna dear.”

  She put up her face to be kissed, and Anna as she bent down to her took up her burden of responsibility again silently and with love.

  Caroline slept an exhausted sleep, but it was a poor night for Anna, who saw no light at all. If Francis loved Caroline, he must have her. If Caroline loved Hugh, she must have him. How could these claims be reconciled? And where, as an afterthought, did she herself come in? One thing was clear, she could not face this problem by herself. Sometimes, she thought of speaking to Hugh, sometimes to Francis, but to do the first would be to betray Caroline’s heart, to do the second might betray her own. Morning found her still undecided.

  Caroline was not down to breakfast. Mrs. Danvers went up to her room to ask her about some plan and found her looking so unwell that she ordered her to stay in bed. Caroline was quite glad to obey her mother-in-law, who enjoyed having invalids and reading aloud to them. Her own children all hated to be read to, but Caroline liked it and found Mrs. Danvers’ voice very soothing.

  The day was wet and dark. Anna felt disinclined to go out alone so she took some embroidery down to her father’s study, knowing that he liked to have her near him while he worked. Since James had become a stranger to his family, Mr. Danvers had turned more and more to his only daughter, who was in many ways nearer to him than his wife. As a young man, he would willingly have devoted himself to the humanities and could have made a high place for himself among scholars, but his father had begged him, an only son, to come into the family business and help him. Seeing this as a duty, he renounced his books and brought to affairs the persistence and occasional genius which he had shown in other fields. In worldly matters, he prospered, he married well and happily, but his heart was never more at rest than in his library. Here he worked at night, producing at long intervals one of those books, which make English amateur scholarship one of England’s glories. Here, as he was able to let the ties of his business slacken, he lived with his oldest and dearest friends, whether tasting honey of Hymettus, olives from a Sabine farm, or a halfpenny worth of bread with two gallons of sack. He had hoped for a son to share these gifts with him. James had such gifts as he himself had possessed, but James wished to write, to create, not to accept the wisdom of others, so his father, remembering the sacrifice of his own youth, made a fresh sacrifice of his riper years that James might do as he wished, and allowed him to choose his own path. That James had done brilliantly and gave promise of more solid achievement to come was Mr. Danvers’ reward. In face of his son’s downfall, he bowed his head and sought an anodyne among his books. Wilfred and George had a certain respect for their father’s attainments, but no wish to emulate them, so Anna, who could enjoy the sack and bread, though the olives hung almost too high for her to reach and the honey was stored for her in vain, became his chosen companion in his leisure hours.

  When Anna came in, he was sitting at his table. His daughter kissed the top of his head and sat down near the fire, while a sooty rain fell outside and the house was silent.

  Mr. Danvers asked Anna where her mother was.

  “With Caroline, Father. Caroline isn’t very well today, so Mother is keeping her in bed.”

  Mr. Danvers looked up with the face of gray anxiety that Anna knew too well. She knew that he was taking on himself the responsibility for anything that happened to Caroline, because it was his eldest son who had betrayed her, and her heart grieved for her fathers unhappiness.

  “Don’t worry, darling,” she said. “She isn’t really ill, only tired. She gets easily tired, you know. Dr. Herbert said she wasn’t to do too much and we have rather racketed lately.”

  “Not enough for the change I have been seeing in Caroline,” said Mr. Danvers, laying down his pen. “Anna, do you think it was really a good plan to bring her to London this winter?”

  As this was exactly what Anna had been asking herself, and as she felt partly responsible for the plan, she answered with rather forced cheerfulness, that she thought it ought to do Caroline good.

  “Doubtless it ought to, but has it? Of late, Anna, I have seen Caroline looking driven and anxious as she did in those first dreadful days. Ought we to have persuaded her to come to town? Do you think she was happier at Beechwood?”

  “She does love Beechwood, of course. And she liked the Beatons so much. But she will soon be all right.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Danvers musingly. “Beaton is an excellent man, one in whom one could place implicit trust. You don’t think she misses him, Anna? I have sometimes wondered a little. But then she has seen him in town during the last few days and doesn’t seem any happier. I did think that being near Hugh and Francis would be an interest, a stimulus for her, but it seems to be quite the opposite. Anna, if Caroline gets ill again I don’t know how to face it.”

  “Darling Father,” said Anna, stretching out a hand and stroking his coat sleeve, “you mustn’t worry so much. I know what you are thinking, that if you had beaten James when he was little all this wouldn’t have happened. But it would. I mean James is James and there it is.”

  “We are what we are,” said Mr. Danvers, finding comfort in the familiar words. “But that doesn’t make me feel less responsible, Anna, for Caroline’s disappointing lack of progress. I fear she isn’t happy, and I don’t know what to do.”

  “Father, I simply can’t bear you to be so anxious. Caroline is unhappy, I know she is, but it isn’t your fault or anyone’s fault.”

  “Tell me what it is – unless it is a secret,” he added quickly.

  “No, Father, not a secret, exactly, because Caroline hadn’t quite told me herself, but I know about it. You see, Father, Caroline was always very fond of Francis and Hugh. Then James quarreled with them and she missed them dreadfully. I think she was thinking about them when James was unkind. Then there was the time when she was so very ill at Beechwood. You remember when she was so ill that she hardly knew where she was, but one name she did remember all through that time, and that was Hugh’s. He did come down and see her, you remember, and though he could only sit and look charming and had nothing to say, that gave her strength to go on.”

  “Do you mean, Anna, that she has been building up her life again with Hugh Mannering in her mind?”

  “Father, you wouldn’t mind, would you? One can’t expect her to go on caring for James, and after all it is a long time ago now, more than a year since she first came to Beechwood. You don’t blame her, do you?”

  “Blame her?” said Mr. Danvers. “You couldn’t really think that of me, Anna. No, I would rejoice if in any way that poor child could be happy again. But Hugh. I like him, Anna, I like them both. But Hugh isn’t the man Francis is. Francis isn’t as brilliant as Hugh, perhaps not even fundamentally as clever, but he has a more tempered nature. A woman like Caroline could put her trust safely in him, but she would have to support Hugh, and she isn’t strong enough. She can endure – and God knows the child has endured – but to deal with Hugh one must be more vital. He needs bullying,” said Mr. Danvers almost unkindly.

  This praise of Francis turned the knife in Anna’s heart and she did not speak. Even to hear him spoken ill of would have been a pleasure. To hear her beloved father speak so well of him pierced and rejoiced her.

  “But Anna,” Mr. Danvers went on, “have you any reason to think that Hugh knows her feelings? Or that she hopes he may? My dear, I don’t want to ask indiscreet questions, but you know how anxious I am for her happiness. Don’t answer if I am pressing to know too
much.”

  “Oh, Father, I wish I knew,” said Anna, fearing that her breaking point might come, yet unwilling to loose this precious chance of disburdening herself in some measure to her father. “I don’t think Hugh has the slightest idea. And I rather agree with what you say about him, though I’m very fond of him. But there is something else which I’m not quite sure if I ought to tell you but it is too much for me to deal with alone and I have dreadfully wanted to have some good advice about it. Father, Francis has asked Caroline to marry him and she says she can’t. She was frightened. She said to me last night that she could never think of a man again unless she loved him unbearably, and there is only one man that she cares for like that, Hugh.”

  “It would appear to be,” said Mr. Danvers, “a case of Ein Jüngling liebt ein Madchen, allowing of course for slight differences.”

  Anna knew that this rather aloof and sententious manner of her father’s always meant that he was more moved than he would admit and, moved herself, tried to answer him in his own vein.

  “At least we haven’t got as far as den ersten besten Mann,” she said lightly. “Caroline isn’t likely to throw herself into, say Colonel Beaton’s arms, because Hugh doesn’t care for her as much as she cares for him.”

  “One sometimes wonders whether that story was really as bad as Heine pretended,” continued Mr. Danvers, seeking refuge from himself in words. “Perhaps the girl really went back to the youth in the end. Or perhaps,” he added, looking at Anna and yet past her, “there was still another personage in that unfortunate and really rather unnecessary entanglement; someone unmentioned who loved the youth and with whom he was very happy when they had all got over having broken hearts. But this history does not relate.”

  Anna nearly jumped at this. Whether it was a shot in the dark or a piece of her father’s disconcerting insight, she could not be sure. Dearly would she like to think that Francis’ bruised heart might at her hands receive peace and healing, but to think of Francis seemed to her disloyal to Caroline. Caroline, for the first time, fell ever so slightly in Anna’s estimation because she could not see the worth of what Francis offered. Then Anna blamed herself for judging Caroline. Was she not in the same case as her sister-in-law, loving where she was not loved? But Caroline at least had Francis’ love if she wanted it. For Anna, no fond heart waited, and her path must be lonely between warring loyalties.

  “Father,” she said, “do you think it would be very unfair to wish that a person one liked didn’t care for a person that didn’t care for them?”

  “Owing to your indeterminate use of indefinite and plural pronouns, a course doubtless dictated by delicacy,” said her father, “I find it difficult to give any judgment on this point. And in any case wishing won’t help whatever it is. These things will come; they will come.”

  Presently, Anna put her work into her bag and went away. Mr. Danvers remained alone, disquieted by what he had heard. Anna’s well meant efforts to cheer him by explaining that Caroline was unhappy from causes beyond his control had not been very successful. It was cruel enough that his own son should be the cause of Caroline’s misery, but if her cousins were now going to add to her troubles, there seemed to be no end to them. He could only hope that Anna’s account of Caroline’s feeling for Hugh was exaggerated. Girls did so love a romance that she was perhaps magnifying a cousinly affection to something warmer. As for Francis, that was more serious. If he had actually asked Caroline to marry him, that was a solid fact, and Mr. Danvers found himself wishing that he had the right to speak to Caroline a few words for her good, for he had sometimes felt uneasily that the child was becoming too absorbed in her own position, feeling more pity for herself than was good for her. But he hadn’t, nor perhaps the courage. It was a kind of comfort to reflect that Anna at least was not involved in any of these emotional tangles. That she would marry he could not but hope, but not yet, not till her fate sent her unmistakably to the right man, a straightforward happy love affair such as his and Evelyn’s had been. If only James had not been as he was. Oh, if only it had been so.

  Chapter VI

  A Walk And A Tea-party

  At Christmas, the Danvers family went down to Beechwood for ten days. Hugh and Francis were going to stay with the Beatons, so there would be dinner parties and a constant coming and going.

  “I hand it to Julia,” said George admiringly as the younger members of the Beechwood party sat on after breakfast on Christmas Eve. “Two eligible young men in the house at once. She is some go-getter, that girl.”

  George’s family were not unaware, partly from the style, partly from the substance of his conversation, that the Russian ballet was at the moment in peril, its ascendancy threatened by what is called, though only in newspapers, the silver screen. It was not always easy to foretell whether George would be a balletomane or a film fan at any given period, and any mistake on his hearers’ part gave great offense.

  “And why shouldn’t Julia have Francis and Hugh to stay?” demanded Wilfred. “This is a free country, it isn’t Russia.”

  “You’re telling me,” observed his brother, which apparently harmless remark caused Wilfred’s resentment to rise again.

  “I am,” said Wilfred. “I say, this isn’t Russia. Why Julia shouldn’t have Hugh and Francis for Christmas in her father’s house, and both of them old enough to be her father, even your arguments fail to explain.”

  “But Wilfred,” said Anna, “you can’t call them old enough to be anybody’s father. Francis can’t be more than thirty-two and Hugh is a bit younger.”

  “If I weren’t old enough to be someone’s father by thirty-two, I’d feel a frightful fool,” said George frankly.

  “You don’t need to be thirty-two to feel that,” said Wilfred.

  “You’re telling me,” responded George.

  “Francis is thirty-three and Hugh thirty-one,” said Caroline. “Hugh is five years older than I am except in January. Then he is six years older than I am just for a month.”

  This, George said, was due to relativity. Wilfred remarked that Einstein was a poisonous little Jew. George said that say what he liked, the film world would be absolutely nowhere without the money and the artistic sense of the Jewish race. Wilfred said that if George didn’t know the difference between Einstein and Eisenstein he couldn’t be much good at his own rotten subject. George said in a loud rude voice, “Hitler, Goebbels and Goering. My God!” and went defiantly but quickly from the room.

  “I say, Anna,” said Wilfred, “can’t you stop George being so infernally impertinent? I’ll lose my temper and go for him one of these days. It’s like this cheek to criticize Julia. Go-getter indeed. She is worth a million of him. As a matter of fact,” he added quite unnecessarily, “I’m going to play golf with her this afternoon. And by Jove, George has got my clubs.”

  Upon which, Wilfred also precipitated himself from the room.

  Anna and Caroline looked at each other and laughed.

  “Thank heaven,” said Caroline, “the boys’ barks are worse than their bites. At least their barks are very trying in family life, but I notice that they never bite each other really. Is Whitelands, or are Whitelands, coming over today?”

  “No, but Colonel Beaton wants to know if we will go for a walk with him this afternoon, him and Francis, and then all go back there to tea. Is that all right?”

  “Perfect.”

  “I mean, you won’t mind?”

  “About Francis? No, darling, that’s all over and done with, and I’m very much ashamed of myself and I love Francis very much, and I love walking with him. Besides, the minute one is at Beechwood one isn’t half so silly. It’s rather priggish to talk about Nature being the great healer, but I am six times less stupid and annoying here than I am in London. When once I get upon the hills I am almost good enough even for you, Anna.”

  But when the walking party set out, it was Colonel Beaton who took his place by Caroline’s side, at Francis’ previous request. The cousins had me
t several times since the fatal tea-party, and though the good breeding and the real affection of both had made things as smooth as possible, Francis still found it difficult to be with Caroline. Therefore, he hinted to Colonel Beaton as they walked up to Beechwood that he would like if possible to attach himself to Anna. Colonel Beaton who was fond of both the young women was quite contented to walk with Caroline, whose long swift step matched his own, though he did wonder for a moment whether Francis had any special reason for wanting to talk to that delightful Anna Danvers.

  As they went up the hollow road to the high lands, Colonel Beaton and Caroline drew away from the other two, not from any wish to be alone, but from pure selfishness. To the real walker, it is agony to walk at any pace but his own. If he has to accommodate himself to a slower step he forges ahead, stops and waits, apologizes, rushes ahead again, and either goes mad and disappears over the horizon, or, walking with ostentatious slowness beside his companion, becomes a prey to sulky melancholy. It is far better for him to indulge in his innocent excesses and throw courtesy to the winds.

  In silence, they pulled up the last steep half-mile of the ascent and stood on the ridge to breathe. To the north fields and heath stretched away to the distant hills. Southwards, the high table land on which they stood lay between them and the sea. To east and west, one could walk for hours on springy turf, looking down steeply onto the bare crowns of the beech trees that grew up the escarpment of the hills. They turned to the west. The path they took ran for miles among scattered juniper bushes, which had the shape of pygmy armies, or birds and animals. Both walkers felt the higher air in their blood, and they pressed forward in silent emulation. Caroline could outwalk most men in speed, if not in ultimate endurance, but with Colonel Beaton, she was hard put to it to hold her own. After the first mile, she had blissfully lost consciousness of herself and sped onward, rejoicing in the rhythm of footsteps, the sense of mastering the earth at each stride, the physical joy of swift movement in the thin pure winter air.